m 



ma 



# r 



SPEECHES, 



uiuiai J 

OF 

J. M. Gitterman 

Shetf 

No. 



LECTURES, AND LETTERS. 



SPEECHES, 



LECTURES, AND LETTERS. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 




BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK: CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 
1884. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

WENDELL PHILLIES, 

1 the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetai 



SEVE>^TH THOUSAND 



t 



PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. 



THESE Speeches and Lectures have been collected 
into a volume at the earnest and repeated requests 
of the personal friends and the followers of Mr. Phillips. 
In commi-tting them to the Publisher, he wrote : — 
" I send you about jone half of my speeches which have 
been reported during the last ten years. Put them into 
a volume, if you think it worth while. Four or five of 
them ('Idols,' 'The Election,' «' Mobs and Education,' 
'Disunion,' 'Progress,') were delivered in such circum- 
stances as made it proper I should set down before- 
hand, substantially, what I had to say. The preserva- 
tion of the rest you owe to phonography ; and most of 
them to the unequalled skill and accuracy, which almost 
every New England speaker living can attest, of my 
friend, J. M. W. Yerrinton. The first speech, relating to 
the murder of Lovejoy, was reported by B. F. Hallett, 
Esq. As these reports were made for some daily or 
weekly paper, I had little time for correction. Giving 
them such verbal revision as the interval allowed, I left 
the substance and shape unchanged. They will serve, 
therefore, at least, as a contribution to the history of our 
Antislavery struggle, and especially as a specimen of the 



t 
iV PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT, 

method and spirit of that movement which takes its name 
from my illustrious friend, William Lloyd Garrison." 

The only liberty the PubHsher has taken with these 
materials has been to reinsert the expressions of approba- 
tion and disapprobation on the part of the audience, which 
Mr. Phillips had erased, and to add one or two notes from 
the newspapers of the day. This was done because they 
were deemed a part of the antislavery history of the times, 
and interesting, therefore, to every one who shall read 
this book, — not now only, but when, its temporary pur- 
pose having been accomplished by the triumph of the 
principles it advocates, it shall be studied as an Ameri- 
can classic, and as a worthy memorial of one of the ablest 
and purest patriots of New England. 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

The Murder of Lovejoy , 1 

Woman's Rights . 11 

Public Oplnion ......••. Sli 

Surrender of Sims b.i 

Sims Anniversary ....,.,. 71 

Philosophy of the Abolition Movement .... 98 

Removal of Judge Loring ..,..., 154 

The Boston Mob 213 

The Pilgrims 228 

Letter to Judge Shaw and President Walker . , . 237 

Idols . • . , , 242 

Harper's Ferry ......... 263 

Burial of John Brown .••...• 289 

Lincoln's Election .... .... 294 

Mobs and Education , . 319 

Disunion 343 

Progress • . . , 371 

Under the Flag . . , . . . . . . 396 

The War for the Union 415 

7 he Cabinet 448 

...etter to the Tribune 464 

. oussAiNT l'Ouverture 468 

Metropolitan Police 495 

''he State of ths Country . ," 524 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



Universal liberty was the inheritance of Wendell Phillips. 
The blood of unmitigated Puritan and of unsullied Revolutionary 
sires ran in his veins. Freedom of thought and of religion had 
been the stamping-ground of his ancestors. He strove for them, 
no less than for freedom of being and of action. 

Born in Boston, — of which city his father, John Phillips, was 
the first mayor, — on the 29th of November, 1811, he was early 
destined to strange distinctions. In 1831 he was graduated from 
Harvard College ; in 1834 he completed a course of study at the 
Harvard Law School, and received the degree of bachelor of laws. 
In the same year he was admitted to practise at the Suffolk bar. 

To him, however, the law was not the all-absorbing study of a 
lifetime ; and, impatient of its details, he sought recreation in the 
exciting topics of the times. Already, M'hen he came to sign the 
roll of the court as a member of the bar of Suffolk, had he ven- 
tured to doubt the Constitution that threw even a partial protection 
around the master of a slave. When he wrote his name to the 
oath to protect the Constitution, he writhed in shame at his own 
weakness. It was not for a day, nor for a week, that his manly 
conscience waged war against that deed of honest troth. For him, 
it was a jjlighted vow to an unloved. He had covenanted with 
circumstances. For a while, a large and increasing practice in his 
profession so occupied his time, that he forgot all else but his 
clients. But, in the trial of cases at the bar, he was training 
his eloquence; and before juries he was modulating that sweet 
voice which was so soon to thrill humanity with its melody of 
freedom. He was, indeed, learning the gamut of the harp of 
hearts. 

m 



IV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

In January, 1832, the Anti-slavery Society was formed, just a 
year after William Lloyd Garrison had begun the publication of 
" The Liberator " in Boston. Who can forget the names of those 
noble-minded men and women eternally linked with the cause of 
emancipation? Wendell Phillips, at the age of twenty-four, found 
himself hurrying with them into the great struggle which was 
impending. Li the crowded thoroughfares of Boston, he found 
the mission of his manhood. Garrison had just been driven from 
an anti-slavery platform. A mob had wrought the deed : the 
Puritan and patriot, the cultured and the rich of Boston, were the 
mob! 

A young man, tall, stately, impassive, of deep convictions and of 
imquenchable resolves, witnesses the events of a day. His soul 
knows the manhood of force, as well as the eloquence of speech. 
Garrison is being dragged through the streets of Boston ; the 
young man follows, while respect for law, j)eace tenets, and per- 
sonal rights, are rioting in his brain. Pregnant liberty is heaving 
in the qualms. The mob, incited by the cries to violence, lay hands 
on Garrison, put a rope around his waist, and drag him to impris- 
onment! What a memorable day for the Puritan city! The 
abolitionist Wendell Phillips is born. 

At the age of twenty-six, Mr. Phillips found himself a leader 
among the devotees of freedom. The murder of Lovejoy in Kan- 
sas, in 1837, brought Phillips into Faneuil Hall, where, in words 
that held his vast audience spell-bound, he laid the foundation of a 
reputation for oratory which has never been surpassed in England 
or America. 

Until the opening of the war between the States, in 1861, Mr. 
Phillips advocated disunion as the only road to abolition. To his 
mind, the Union was but a covenant between good and evil ; and 
the Constitution, being at the bottom of the alliance, was specially 
odious in his eyes. When, however, the first gun was fired, he 
changed his condemnation of the Union to support of it, and 
accepted war as a means to the end he held in view. In 1863-61, 
he advocated the arming, educating, and enfranchising the freed- 
men, and for the two latter purposes procured the continuance of 
the Anti-slavery Society until the adoption of the Fifteenth 
Amendment in 1869. 

With this enactment the mission of ]\Ir. Phillips seemed to have 
ended. For more than thirty years, standing face to face with 
masses of men, he had sent truth home to their souls in the most 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. V 

effectual manner. He had sown the dragon's teeth, from which 
sprang the armed men who alone were competent to the accomplish- 
ment of the great end to which the most valuable years of his life 
had been devoted. 

But Mr. Phillips could not remain idle. Restless energy was 
the motive power of his nature, and it soon forced him into other 
fields of labor. In turn he espoused the cause of the laboring-man, 
of prohibition, of the woman-suffragists, of prison-reform, of the 
paper-money advocates, and of the Irish cause. 

In 1870 the workingmen and the prohibitionists of Massachu- 
setts nominated Mr. Phillips for governor of his native State. In 
the election of that year he received upwards of twenty thousand 
votes. The fact that he was a nondnee for office in this instance 
stands clearly in contrast with the balance of his life, yet it is no 
exception. He led a forlorn-hope, — a handful of men fighting, 
not with any expectation of electing their candidate, but with the 
determination of emphasizing their beliefs by counted ballots. It 
could be truthfully said of Mr. Phillips, that least of all was he an 
office-seeker. Scarcely was he out of college when he put aside all 
ambition, and took his place among those (and few they are) who 
labor only for the uplifting of their fellow men and women. 

As a man of letters, Mr. Phillips won the brightest laurels of his 
riper life. For many years he was a popular lecturer, appearing 
on the platform in most of the Northern cities. His lecture on 
" The Lost Arts," which was rather a series than a single work, 
and w^hich was ever changing form and seeking new truths, was 
one of the most finished productions of the modern type of mind. 
Among his other subjects, winning for him constant admiration, 
may be mentioned "Street Life in Europe," " Toussaint I'Ouver- 
ture," " Daniel O'Comiell," and his eulogies on Theodore Parker 
and John Brown. 

Among his published writings, the following are noteworthy - 
" The Constitution a Pro-Slavery Contract," 1844 ; '• Can Abolition- 
ists vote or take Office?" 1845; "Review of Spooner's Unconsti- 
tutionality of Slavery," 1847 ; " Addresses," 1850 ; " Review of 
Webster's Seventh-of-March Speech," 1850; "Review of Kossuth's 
Course," 1851 ; " Defence of the Anti-Slavery Movement," 1851. 
All of these productions were received with approbation by the 
followers of his doctrines, but with bitter condemnation by all 
persons opposed to the principles which he espoused. Mr. Phillips 
left no complete collection of his w^orks. In 1863 appeared this 



Vi BIOGKAPHICAL SKETCH. 

collection of his "Speeches, Lectures, and Letters." During the 
last years of his life, he was engaged, at intervals, in the prepara- 
tion of a second volume of addresses, and was also writing out 
the reminiscences of his own busy life. 

One of the greatest events of his later career was his a^ppearance 
on June 30, 1881, before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta 
Kappa, as the orator of the occasion. He might then have chosen 
a subject upon which all persons would have agreed ; but, had he 
done so, he would not have been Wendell Phillips. For him it 
was an opportunity, and in his address on *' The Scholar in the 
Republic," he delivered one of the most remarkable efforts of 
the century. 

Mr. Phillips spoke for the last time in public, on the occasion of 
the unveiling of the statue of Harriet Martineau in the Old South 
Meeting-house, Dec. 26, 1883. His days came to a close on Feb. 2, 
1884. The cause of his death was angina pectoris. 

No eulogy of Wendell Phillips is required. A man whose name 
is stamped upon every page of the most memorable epoch of 
American history is not likely to be soon forgotten. No age ever 
produced a greater master of invective, no voice ever aroused a 
more bitter hatred in unsympathetic minds. They who the most 
keenly felt the sting of his eloquence could not but admire his 
deep sense of right, his earnestness, his honesty, and his rarest of 
earthly virtues, — unselfishness. A purpose divinely conceived, a 
mission grandly accomplished, a spotless name, — such are his 
bequests to the American people. 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOT. 



On November 7, 1837, Rev. E. P. Lovejoy was shot by a mob at Alton, 
Elinois, while attempting to defend his printing-press from destruction. 
When this was known in Boston, William Ellery Channing headed a 
petition to the Mayor and Aldermen, asking the use of Faneuil Hall 
for a public meeting. The request was refused. Dr. Channing then 
addressed a very impressive letter to his fellow-citizens, which resulted 
in a meeting of influential gentleman at the Old Court Room. Reso- 
lutions, drawn by Hon. B-'F. Hallett, were unanimously adopted, and 
measures taken to secure a much larger number of names to the peti- 
tion. This call the Mayor and Aldermen obeyed. 

The meeting was held on the 8th of December, and organized, with 
the Hon. Jonathan Phillips for Chairman. 

Dr. Channing made a brief and eloquent address. Resolutions, 
drawn by him, were then read and offered by Mr. Hallett, and sec- 
onded in an able speech by George S. Hillard, Esq. 

The Hon. James T. Austin, Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, 
followed in a speech of the utmost bitterness, styled by the Boston 
Atlas a few days after " most able and triumphant." He compared 
the slaves to a menagerie of wild beasts, and the rioters at Alton to 
the "■orderly mob '^ which threw the tea overboard in 1773, — talked 
of the " conflict of laws " between Missouri and Illinois, — declared 
that Lovejoy was " presumptuous and imprudent," and " died as the 
fool dietli " ; in direct and most insulting reference to Dr. Chan- 
ning, he asserted that a clergyman with a gun in his hand, or one 
"mingling in the debates of a popular assembly, was marvellously 
out of place." 

The speech of the Attorney-General produced great excitement 
throughout the Hall. Wendell Phillips, Esq., who had not expected 
1 



2 THE MuS^EK OF LOVEJOY. 

to take part in the meeting, rose to reply. That portion of th; assem- 
bly which sympathized with Mr. Austin now became so boisterous, that 
Mr. Phillips had difficulty for a while in getting the attention of tho 
audience. 



MR. CHAIRMAN : — We have met for the freest dis- 
cussion of these resokitions, and the events which 
gave rise to them. [Cries of " Question," " Hear him," 
" Go on," " No gagging," etc.] I hope I shall be per- 
mitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last 
speaker, — surprise not only at such sentiments from such 
a man, but at the applause they have received within these 
walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events 
of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have 
heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain 
had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the 
mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, com- 
pared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea over- 
board! [Great applause.]. Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil 
Hall doctrine ? [" No, no."] The mob at Alton were met 
to wrest from a citizen his just rights, — met to resist the 
laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same ; 
and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has 
been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out 
their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the 
British Parliament had a right to tax these Colonies. It is 
manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground ; 
for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bul- 
warks. He was not only defending the freedom of the 
press, but he was under his own 1 3of, in arms with the 
sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed 
him went against and over the laws. The moh^ as the 
gentleman terms it, — mob, forsooth ! certainly we sons 
of the tea-spdlers are a marvellously patient generation ! ^ 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 3 

the " orderly mob " whicli assembled in the Old South to 
destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal 
exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax 
and stamp-act laws ! Our fathers resisted, not the King's 
prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other 
account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside 
down. Our State archives are loaded with aro-uments of 
John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parlia- 
ment unconstitutional, — beyond its power. It was not 
till this was made out that the men of New EnMand rushed 
to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the 
House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the 
contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a 
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves 
have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The differ- 
ence between the excitements of those days and our own, 
which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has over- 
looked, is simply this : the men of that day went for the 
right, as secured by the laws. They were the people 
rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. 
The rioters of our day go for their own wills, right or 
wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down prin- 
ciples which place the murderers of Alton side by side 
with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I 
thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in 
the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the 
recreant American, — the slanderer of the dead. [Great 
applause and counter applause.] The gentleman said that 
he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay 
the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments 
he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puri- 
tans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have 
yawned and swallowed him up. 

[Applause and hisses, with cries of " Take that back." The uproar 
became so great that for a long time no one could be heard. At length 



4 THE MURDf!^ OF LOVEJOY. 

G. Bond, Esq., and Hon. W. Sturgis came to Mr. Phillips's side at the 
front of the platform. They were met with cries of " Phillips or no- 
body," "Make him take back ' recreant,'" "He sha'n't go on till he 
takes it back." When it was understood they meant to sustain, not to 
interrupt, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Sturgis was listened to, and said: "I did 
not come here to take any part in this discussion, nor do I intend to ; 
but I do entreat you, fellow-citizens, by everything you hold sacred, — 
I conjure you by every association connected with this Hall, conse- 
crated by our fathers to freedom of discussion, — that you listen to every 
man who addresses you in a decorous manner." Mr. Phillips resumed.] 

Fellow-citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely 
the Attorney-General, so long and well known here, needs 
not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am, — 
my voice never before heard within these walls ! 

Another ground has been taken to excuse the mob, and 
throw doubt and discredit on the conduct of Lovejoy and 
his associates. Allusion has been made to what lawyers 
understand very well, — the "conflict of laws." We are 
told that nothing but the Mississippi River rolls between 
St. Louis and Alton ; and the conflict of laws somehow or 
other gives the citizens of the former a right to find fault 
with the defender of the press for publishing his opinions 
so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that 
argument before lawyers ? How the laws of the two 
States could be said to come into conflict in such circum- 
stances I question whether any lawyer in this audience 
can explain or understand. No matter whether the line 
that divides one sovereign State from another be an im- 
aginary one or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it the 
State you leave is blotted out of existence, so far as you 
are concerned. The Czar might as well claim to control 
the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri 
demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from an 
inhabitant of Illinois. 

I must find some fault with the statement which has 
been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 6 

why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the execu- 
tive, — trust their defence to the poHce of the city. It has 
been hinted that, fi'om hasty and ill-judged excitement, the 
men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he 
fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another. Recol- 
lect, Sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction 
of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was no executive to 
appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that 
he could not protect them. They asked him if it was 
lawful for them to defend themselves. He told them it 
was, and sanctioned their assembling in arms to do so. 
They were not, then, a mob ; they were not merely citizens 
defending their own property ; they were in some sense 
the posse co7nitatus, adopted for the occasion into the pohce 
of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate. It 
was civil authority resisting lawless violence. Where, 
then, was the imprudence ? Is the doctrine to be sus- 
tained here, that it is imprudent for men to aid magis- 
trates in executing the laws? 

Men are continually asking each other. Had Lovejoy a 
right to resist ? Sir, I protest against the question, instead 
of answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they 
mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right 
of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the 
do£:s of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow. 

Sh*, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual 
protecting his property ; it was not one body of armed men 
resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city 
run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the 
scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, 
and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws 
under foot. No ; the men in that house were regularly 
enrolled^ under the sanction of the Mayor. There being no 
militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the 
approbation of the Mayor. These relieved each other every 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 

other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night 
of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next even- 
ing, it was not thought necessary to summon more than 
half that number ; among these was Lovejoy. It was, 
therefore, you perceive. Sir, the police of the city resisting 
rioters, — civil government breasting itself to the shock (if 
lawless men. 

Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It 
is in fact simply this : Has the civil magistrate a right to 
put down a riot ? 

Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at 
Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at 
all. " No one of us," says an eyewitness and a comrade 
of Lovejoy, '' has taken up arms during these disturbances 
but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy did not 
settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed 
his last. Till then the law, represented in his person, 
sustained itself against its foes. When he fell, civil 
authority was trampled under foot. He had " planted 
himself on his constitutional rights," — appealed to the 
laws, — claimed the protection of the civil authority, — 
taken refuge under " the broad shield of the Constitu- 
tion. When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell 
but one sufferer in a common catastrophe." He took 
refuge under the banner of liberty, — amid its folds ; and 
when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, the emblem of 
free institutions, around which cluster so many heart-stir- 
ring memories, were blotted out in the martyr's blood. 

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy 
or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who 
have the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired 
by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the 
building consulted together and deliberately returned the 
fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right 
so to do ; not only the right which every citizen has to 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 7 

defend himself, but the further right which every civil 
officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the 
first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or 
destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defence of a 
free press. The question now is, Did he act within the 
Constitution and the laws ? The men who fell in State 
Street on the 5th of March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy 
is charged with. They were the first assailants. Upon 
some slight quarrel they pelted the troops with every mis- 
sile withm reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy 
with which Hancock and Warren hallowed their mem- 
ory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of 
American liberty ? 

If, Sir, I had adopted what are called Peace principles, I 
might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you 
who believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates 
to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base hypoc- 
risy the conduct of those who assemble year after year on 
the 4th of July, to fight over the battles of the Revolution, 
and yet " damn with faint praise," or load with obloquy, 
the memory of this man, who shed his blood in defence 
of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press ! 

Throuo;hout that terrible nio;ht I find nothino; to regret 
but this, that within the limits of our country, civil author- 
ity should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to 
arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain. The gentle- 
man says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent, — he 
" died as the fool dieth." And a reverend clergyman of 
the city * tells us that no citizen has a right to publish 
opinions disagreeable to the community ! If any mob 
follows such publication, on him rests its guilt ! He must 
wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with 

* See Rev. Hubbard Winslow's discoui'se on Libeiiy ! in which he defines 
" republican liberty " to be " liberty to say and do what the prevailing voice 
and will of the brotherhood will allow and protect. " 



8 THE MufeER OF LOVEJOY. 

him ! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want 
of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from 
repubhcan institutions ! If this be so, what are they 
worth ? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where 
one knows what he may publish and what he may not, 
rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the 
mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till 
some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson 
with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check 
for the abuses of the press, not the law^ but the dread of 
a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual 
and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, 
since the expression of their opinion may sometimes pro- 
voke disturbance from the minority. A few men may 
make a mob as well as many. The majority, then, have 
no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by 
any possibility it may lead to a mob ! Shades of Hugh 
Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits ! 

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press ! Why ? 
Because the defence was unsuccessful ? Does success 
gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change 
heroic self-devotion to imprudence ? Was Hampden im- 
prudent when he drew the sword and threw away the 
scabbard ? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was un- 
successful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat 
again upon the throne. 

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker 
Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would 
have run thus : " The patriots are routed, — the red- 
coats victorious, — Warren lies dead upon the field." With 
what scorn would that Tory have been received, who 
should have charged Warren with imprudence ! who should 
have said that, bred a physician, he was " out of place " in 
that battle, and " died as the fool dieth^^ ! [Great applause.] 
How would the intimation have been received, that War* 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 9 

ren and his associates should have waited a better time ? 
But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, 
Mesjnce finem, — wait till the end. 

Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on 
American ground ! Is the assertion of such freedom be- 
fore the age ? So much before the age as to leave one no 
right to make it because it displeases the community ? 
Who invents this libel on his country ? It is this very 
thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The dis- 
puted right which provoked the Revolution — taxation 
without representation — is far beneath that for which he 
died. [Here there was a strong and general expression 
of disapprobation.] One word, gentlemen. As much as 
thought is better than money, so much is the cause in 
which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. 
James Otis thundered in this Hall when the King did 
but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant 
eloquence, had England offered to put a gag upon his 
lips. [Great applause.] 

The question that stirred the Revolution touched our 
civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but 
as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost 
with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the 
instructions of the pulpit, and the progress of our faith. 

The clergy " marvellously out of place " where free 
speech is battled for, — liberty of speech on national sins ? 
Does the gentleman remember that freedom to preach was 
first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print ? I thank 
the clergy here present, as I reverence their predecessors, 
who did not so far forget their country in their immediate 
profession as to deem it duty to separate themselves from 
the struggle of '76, — the Mayhews and Coopers, who re- 
membered they were citizens before they were clergymen. 

Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that 
brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remem- 



10 THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 

ber that Lovejoy had fled from city to city, — suffered 
the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he 
took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integ- 
rity, of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought 
the crisis had come : it was full time to assert the laws. 
They saw around them, not a community like our own, of 
fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one " in 
the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." 
The people there, children of our older States, seem to have 
forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the 
moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Some- 
thing was to be done to show them the priceless value of 
the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their 
wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked 
out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indif- 
ferent to their rights and confused in their feelino-s. Deaf 
to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. 
They saw that of wdiich we cannot judge, the necessity of 
resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, 
fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested. 

Does not the event show they judged rightly ? Ab- 
sorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the nation all at 
once come to a stand ? Men begin, as in 1776 and 1640, 
to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where 
they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne 
over the precipice. 

I am glad. Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good 
for us to be here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil 
Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note 
for these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that 
remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been 
uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite 
of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General of the 
Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, 
the deep indignation with which Boston regards this 
outrage. 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS 



This speech was made at a Convention held at Worcester, on the 
15th and 16th of October, 1851, upon the following resolutions, which 
were offered by Mr. Phillips : — 

" 1. Resolved, That, while we would not undervalue other methods, 
the right of suffrage for women is, in our opinion, the corner-stone 
of this enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but rather 
to place her in a position to protect herself. 

" 2. Resolved, That it will be woman's fault if, the ballot once in her 
hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating to 
marriage and property do not speedily vanish from the statute-book ; 
and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the higher pro- 
fessions and profitable employments of society is one of the strongest 
motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an interest in 
political questions is an equally powerful stimulus ; and we see, beside, 
that we do our best to insure education to an individual, when we put 
the ballot into his hands ; it being so clearly the interest of the com- 
munity that one upon whose decisions depend its welfare and safety 
should both have free access to the best means of education, and be 
urged to make use of them. 

*' 3. Resolved, That we do not feel called upon to assert or establish 
the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of view. 
It is enough for our argument that natural and political justice, and 
the axioms of English and American liberty, alike determine that 
rights and burdens, taxation and representation, should be co- 
extensive ; hence women, as individual citizens, liable to punishment 
for acts which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in their labor and 
property for the support of government, have a self-evident and indis- 
putable right, identically the same right that men have, to a direct 
voice in the enactment of those laws and the formation of that govern- 
ment. 

" 4. Resolved, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suffrage to 



12 WOMA^S RIGHTS. 

women, is a democrat only because he was not born a noble, and one 
of those levellers who are willing to level only down to themselves. 

*' 5. Resolved^ That while political and natural justice accord civil 
equality to woman ; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to 
Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim ; while voluntary 
associations, religious and secular, have been organized on this basis, — 
there is yet a favorite argument against it, that no political community 
or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a state of 
political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents that the 
samfi fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of slavery ; has 
been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience, and 
the freedom of the press ; none of these liberties having been thought 
compatible with a well-ordered state, until they had proved their pos- 
sibility by springing into existence as facts. Besides, there is no diffi- 
culty in understanding why the subjection of woman has been a uniform 
custom, when we recollect that we are just emerging from the ages in 
which might has been always right. 

" 6. Resolved, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social and 
civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent ; aware, 
with Demosthenes, that ' measures which the statesman has meditated 
a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman ' ; and for this 
very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to endow her 
with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this mighty influ- 
ence under a just sense of her duty and responsibihty ; the history of 
all ages bearing witness that the only safe course for nations is to add 
open responsibility wherever there already exists unobserved power. 

" 7. Resolved, That we deny the right of any portion of the species 
to decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for another 
individual, what is and what is not its ' proper sphere * ; that the 
proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which 
they are able to attain ; what this is cannot be ascertained without 
complete hberty of choice ; woman, therefore, ought to choose for her- 
self what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and what 
employment she will follow ; and not be held bound to accept, in sub- 
mission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man thinks 
proper to allow her. 

" 8. Resolved, That we hold these truths to be self-evident : ' That all 
men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these rights, governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of 
the governed ' ; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or igno* 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 13 

ranee who shall contend that ' men,' in the memorable document from 
which we quote, does not stand for the human race ; that * life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ' are the ' inahenable rights ' of half 
only of the human species ; and that, by ' the governed,' whose con- 
sent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that half 
of mankind only who, in relation to the other, have hitherto assumed 
the character of governors. 

" 9. Resolved, That we see no weight in the argument, that it is neces- 
sary to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares and polit- 
ical engagements are incompatible ; since we do not see the fact to be 
so in the case of man ; and because, if the incompatibility be real, it 
will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing any law to 
exclude them from an occupation when they have undertaken another 
incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the assertion that 
women themselves do not desire a change, since we assert that super- 
stitious fears, and dread of losing men's regard, smother all frank 
expression on this point ; and further, if it be their real wish to avoid 
civil life, laws to keep them out of it are absurd, no legislator having 
ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by law to follow their 
own inclination. 

*' 10. Resolved, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil 
rights because the cares of household and family take up all the time 
of some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress, 
because some men are sailors, or soldiers, in active service, or mer* 
chants, whose business requires all their atteotion and energies." 



IN drawing up some of tliese resolutions, I have used, 
very ipreely, the language of a thoughtful and profound 
article in the Westminster Review. It is a review of the 
proceedings of our recent Convention in this city, and 
states with singular clearness and force the leading argu- 
ments for our reform, and the grounds of our claim in 
behalf of woman. 

I rejoice to see so large an audience gathered to con- 
sider this momentous subject. It was well described by 
Mrs. Rose as the most magnificent reform that has yet 
been launched upon the world. It is the first organized 



14 wojiaWI rights. 

protest against the injustice which has brooded over the 
character and the destiny of one half of the human race. 
Nowhere else, under any circumstances, has a demand 
ever yet been made for the liberties of one whole half of 
our race. It is fitting that we should pause and consider 
so remarkable and significant a circumstance ; that we 
should discuss the question involved with the seriousness 
and deliberation suitable to such an enterprise. It strikes, 
indeed, a great and vital blow at the whole social fabric of 
every nation ; but this, to my mind, is no argument 
against it. The time has been when it was the duty of 
the reformer to show cause why he appeared to disturb 
the quiet of the world. But during the discussion of the 
many reforms that have been advocated, and which have 
more or less succeeded, one after another, — freedom of 
the lower classes, freedom of food, freedom of the press, 
freedom of thought, reform in penal legislation, and a 
thousand other matters, — it seems to me to have been 
proved conclusively, that government commenced in 
usurpation and oppression ; that liberty and civihzation, 
at present, are nothing else than the fi-agments of rights 
which the scaffold and the stake have wruno; from the 
strong hands of the usurpers. Every step of progress the 
world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and 
from stake to stake. It would hardly be exaggeration to 
say, that all the great truths relating to society and gov- 
ernment have been first heard in the solemn protests of 
martyred patriotism, or the loud cries of crushed and 
starving labor. The law has been always wrong. Gov- 
ernment began in tyranny and force, began in the feudal- 
ism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest ; and the ideas 
of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, 
like a thunder-storm, against the organized selfishness 
of human nature. And this is the last great protest 
agamst the wrong of ages. It is no argument to my 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 15 

mind, therefore, that the old social fabric of the past is 
against us. 

Neither do I feel called upon to show wnat woman's 
proper sphere is. In every great reform, the majority 
have always said to the claimant, no matter what he 
claimed, " You are not fit for such a privilege." Luther 
asked of the Pope liberty for the masses to read the Bible, 
The reply was, that it would not be safe to trust the 
common people with the word of God. " Let them try ! " 
said the great reformer ; and the history of three centuries 
of development and purity proclaims the result. They 
have tried ; and look around you for the consequences. 
The lower classes in France claimed their civil rights, — 
the right to vote, and to direct representation in the gov- 
ernment ; but the rich and lettered classes, the men of 
cultivated intellects, cried out, " You cannot be made 
fit." The answer was, " Let us try." That France is 
not, as Spain, utterly crushed beneath the weight of a 
thousand years of misgovernment, is the answer to those 
who doubt the ultimate success of this experiment. 

Woman stands now at the same door. She says, " You 
tell me I have no intellect : give me a chance. You tell 
me I shall only embarrass politics : let me try." The 
only reply is the same stale argument that said to the Jews 
of Europe, " You are fit only to make money ; you .are 
not fit for the ranks of the army or the halls of Parlia- 
ment." How cogent the eloquent appeal of Macaulay, — 
" What right have we to take this question for granted ? 
Throw open the doors of this House of Commons, throw 
open the ranks of the imperial army, before you deny 
eloquence to the countrymen of Isaiah or valor to the 
descendants of the Maccabees." It is the same now with 
us. Throw open the doors of Congi'ess, throw open those 
court-houses, throw wide open the doors of your colleges, 
and give to the sisters of the Motts and the Somervilles 



16 '^?5!lll^'S RIGHTS. 

the same opportunities for culture that men have, and let 
the result prove what their capacity and intellect really 
are. When, I say, woman has enjoyed, for as many 
centuries as we have, the aid of books, the discipline of 
life, and the stimulus of fame, it will be time to begin the 
discussion of these questions, — " What is the intellect 
of woman ? " " Is it equal to that of man ? " Till then, 
all such discussion is mere beating of the air. 

While it is aoubtless true that great minds, in many 
cases, make a way for themselves, spite of all obstacles, 
yet who knows how many Miltons have died " mute and 
inglorious " ? However splendid the natural endowment, 
the discipKne of life, after all, completes the miracle. The 
ability of Napoleon, — what was it ? It grew out of the 
hope to be Caesar or Marlborough, — out of Austerlitz and 
Jena, — out of his battle-fields, his throne, and all the 
great scenes of that eventful life. Open to woman the 
same scenes, immerse her in the same great interests and 
pursuits, and if twenty centuries shall not produce a 
woman Charlemagne or Napoleon, fair reasoning will then 
aUow us to conclude that there is some distinctive pecu- 
liarity in the intellects of the sexes. Centuries alone can 
lay any fair basis for argument. I believe that, on this 
point, there is a shrinking consciousness of not being ready 
for the battle, on the part of some of the stronger sex, as 
they call themselves ; a tacit confession of risk to this 
imagined superiority, if they consent to meet their sisters 
in the lectm-e-hall or the laboratory of science. My proof 
of it is this : that the mightiest intellects of the race, from 
Plato down to the present time, some of the rarest minds 
of Germany, France, and England, have successively 
yielded their assent to the fact that woman is, not per- 
haps identically, but equally, endowed with man in all 
intellectual capabilities. It is generally the second-rate 
men who doubt, — doubt, perhaps, because they fear a 
fair field : — 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 17 

** He either fears his fate too much, 
Or his deserts are small, 
Who fears to put it to the touch, 
To gain or lose it all." 

But I wish especially to direct your attention to the 
precise principle which this movement undertakes to urge 
upon the community. We do not attempt to settle 
what shall be the profession, education, or employment ot 
woman. We have not that presumption. What we ask 
is simply this, — what all other classes have asked before : 
Leave it to woman to choose for herself her profession, 
her education, and her sphere. We deny to any portion 
of the species the right to prescribe to any otlier portion 
its sphere, its education, or its rights. We deny the right 
of any individual to prescribe to any other individual his 
amount of education, or his rights. The sphere of each 
man, of each woman, of each individual, is that spliere 
which he can, with the highest exercise of his powers, 
perfectly fill. The highest act which the human being 
can do, that is the act which God designed him to do. 
All that woman asks through this movement is, to be 
allowed to prove what she can do ; to prove it by liberty 
of choice, by liberty of action, the only means by which it 
ever can be settled how much and what she can do. She 
can reasonably say to us : "I have never fathomed the 
depths of science ; you have taught that it was un- 
womanly, and have withdrawn from me the means of sci- 
entific culture. I have never equalled the eloquence of 
Demosthenes ; but you have never quickened my ener- 
gies by holding up before me the crown and robe of glory, 
and the gratitude which I was to win. The tools, now, 
to him or her who can use them. Welcome me, hence- 
forth, brother, to your arena ; and let facts — not theo- 
ries — settle my capacity, and therefore my sphere." 

We are not here to-night to assert that woman will 



18 wSftUN' 



S RIGHTS. 



enter the lists and conquer ; that she will certainly 
achieve all that man has achieved ; but this we say, 
" Clear the lists, and let her try."* Some reply, " It 
will be a gi'eat injury to feminine delicacy and refine- 
ment for woman to mingle in business and politics." I 
am not careful to answer this objection. Of all such ob- 
jections, on this and kindred subjects, Mrs. President, I 
love to dispose in some sucli way as this : The broadest 
and most far-sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee 
the ultimate consequences of any great social change. 
Ask yourself, on all such occasions, if there be any ele- 
ment of right and wrong in the question, any principle of 
clear natural justice that turns the scale. If so, take your 
part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to 
see that it shall prove the expedient. The questions, 
then, for me, on this subject, are these : Has God made 
woman capable — morally, intellectually, and physically — 
of taking this part in human affairs ? Then, what God 
made her able to do, it is a strong argument that he in- 
tended she should do. Does our sense of natural justice 
dictate that the being who is to suffer under laws shall 
first personally assent to them ? that the being whose 
industry government is to burden should have a voice- 
in fixing the character and amount of that burden ? 
Then, while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, 
and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the 
ballot-box. " But to go there will hurt that delicacy of 
character which we have always thought peculiarly her 
grace." I cannot help that. Let Him who created her 
capable of politics, and made it just that she should have 
a share in them, see to it that these rights which he has 
conferred do not injure the being he created. Is it for 
any human being to trample on the laws of justice and 
liberty, from an alleged necessity of helping God govern 
what he has made ? I cannot help God govern his world 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 19 

by telling lies, or doing what my conscience deems unjust. 
How absurd to deem it necessary tliat any one should do 
so ! When Infinite Wisdom established the rules of right 
and honesty, he saw to it that justice should be always 
the highest expediency. 

The evil, therefore, that some timid souls fear to the 
character of woman, from the exercise of her political 
ricrhts, does not at all trouble me. " Let education form 
the rational and moral being, and nature will take care of 
the woman." Neither do I feel at all disturbed by those 
arguments addressed to us as to the capacity of woman. 
I know that the humblest man and the feeblest has the 
same civil rights, accordino; to the theorv of our institu- 
tions, as the most gifted. It is never claimed that the 
humblest shall be denied his civil right, provided he be 
a man. No. Intellect, even though it reach the Alpine 
height of a Parker, — ay, setting aside the infamy of his 
conduct, and looking at him only as an instance of intel- 
lectual greatness, to the height of a Webster, — gets no 
tittle of additional civil right, no one single claim to any 
greater civil privilege than the humblest individual, who 
knows no more than the first elements of his alj^habet, 
provided that being is a man (I ought to say, a ivliite 
man). Grant, then, that woman is intellectually inferior 
to man, — it settles nothing. She is still a responsible, 
tax-paying member of civil society. We rest our claim 
on the great, eternal principle, that taxation and repre- 
sentation must be coextensive ; that riohts and burdens 
must correspond to each other ; and he who undertakes 
to answer the argument of this Convention must first 
answer the whole course of English and American history 
for the last hundred and fifty years. No single principle 
of liberty has been enunciated, from the year 1688 until 
now, that does not cover the claim of woman. The State 
has never laid the basis of right upon the distinction of 



20 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

sex ; and no reason lias ever been given, except a religious 
one, — that there are in the records of our religion com- 
mands obliging us to make woman an exception to our 
civil theories, and deprive her of that which those theories 
give her. 

Suppose that woman is essentially inferior to man, — 
she still has rights. Grant that Mrs. Norton never could 
be Byron ; that Elizabeth Barrett never could have 
written Paradise Lost ; that Mrs. Somerville never could 
be La Place, nor Sirani have painted the Transfiguration. 
What then ? Does that prove they should be deprived of 
all civil rights ? John Smith never will be, never can be, 
Daniel Webster. Shall he, therefore, be put under guar- 
dianship, and forbidden to vote ? 

Suppose woman, though equal, to differ essentially in 
her intellect fi'om man, — is that any ground for disfran- 
chising her ? Shall the Fultons say to the Raphaels, 
" Because you cannot make steam-engines, therefore you 
shall not vote " ? Shall the Napoleons or the Washing- 
tons say to the Wordsworths or the Herscliels, " Because 
you cannot lead armies and govern states, therefore you 
shall have no civil rights " ? 

Grant that woman's intellect be essentially different, 
even inferior, if you choose ; still, while our civilization 
allows her to hold property, and to be the guardian of her 
children, she is entitled to such education and to such 
civil rio-hts — votino^, among: the rest — as will enable her 
to protect both her children and her estate. It is easy to 
indulge in dilettanti speculation as to woman's sphere and 
the female intellect ; but leave dainty speculation, and 
come down to practical life. Here is a young widow ; 
she has children, and ability, if you will let her exercise it, 
to give them the best advantages of education, to secure 
them every chance of success in life ; or, she has property 
to keep for them, and no friend to rely on. Shall she 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 21 

leave them to sink in the unequal struggles of life ? Shall 
she trust their all to any adviser money can buy, in order 
to gratify your taste, and give countenance to your nice 
theories ? or shall she use all the powers God has given 
her for those he has thrown upon her protection ? If we 
consult common sense, and leave theories alone, there is 
but one answer. Such a one can rightfully claim of soci- 
ety all the civil privileges, and of fashion all such liberty 
as will best enable her to discharge fully her duties as a 
mother. 

But woman, it is said, may safely trust all to the watch- 
ful and 2;enerous care of man. She has been obliged to 
do so hitherto. With what result, let the unequal and 
unjust legislation of all nations answer. In Massachusetts, 
lately, a man married an heiress, worth fifty thousand 
dollars. Dying, about a year after his marriage, he made 
this remarkably generous and manly will. He left these 
fifty thousand dollars to her so long as she should remain 
his widow ! [Loud laughter.] These dollars, which he 
owed entirely to her, which were fairly hers, he left to 
her, after twelve months' use, on this generous condition, 
that she should never marry again ! Ought a husband 
to have such unlimited control over the property of his 
wife, or over the property which they have together 
acquired ? Ought not woman to have a voice in deter- 
mining what the law shall be in regard to the property of 
married persons ? Often by her efforts, always by her 
economy, she contributes much to the stock of family 
w^ealth, and is therefore justly entitled to a voice in the 
control and disposal of it. Neither common sense nor past 
experience encourages her to trust the protection of that 
right to the votes of men. That 

" Mankind is ever weak, 
And little to be trusted ; 
If self the wavering balance strike. 
It 's rarely right adjusted," ~- 



22 WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 

is true between the sexes, as much as between hidi- 
viduals. 

Make the case our own. Is there any man here wilHng 
to resign his own right to vote, and trust his welfare and 
his earnings entirely to the votes of others ? Suppose any 
class of men should condescendingly oifer to settle for us 
our capacity or our calling, — to vote for us, to choose our 
sphere for us, — how ridiculously impertinent we should 
consider it ! Yet few have the good sense to laugh at the 
consummate impertinence with which every bar-room 
brawler, every third-rate scribbler, undertakes to settle 
the sphere of the Martineaus and the De Staels ! With 
what orracious condescension little men continue to lee- 
lure and preach on " the female sphere " and " female 
duties " ! 

This Convention does not undertake the task of pro- 
tecting woman. It contends that, in government, every 
individual should be endowed, as far as possible, with the 
means of protecting himself. jThis is far more the truth 
when we deal with classes. Every class should be en- 
dowed with the power to protect itself. Man has hitherto 
undertaken to settle what is best for woman in the way 
of education and in the matter of property. He has set- 
tled it for her, that her duties and cares are too great to 
allow her any time to take care of her own earnings, or to 
take her otherwise legitimate share in the civil government 
of the country. He has not undertaken to say that the 
sailor or the soldier, in active service, when he returns 
from his voyage or his camp, is not free to deposit his 
vote in the ballot-box. He has not undertaken to say 
that the manufacturer, whose factories cover whole town- 
ships, who is up early and lies down late, who has to 
borrow the services of scores to help him in the manage- 
ment of his vast estate, — he does not say that such a man 
cannot get time to study politics, and ought therefore to 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 23 

be deprived of his right to vote with his fellow-citizens. 
He has not undertaken to say that the lawyer mav not 
vote, though his whole time is spent in the courts, until he 
knows nothing of what is going on in the streets. O no ! 
But as for woman, her time omist be all so entirely filled 
in taking care of her household, her cares must be so 
extensive, that neither those of soldiers nor sailors nor 
merchants cpai be equal to them ; she has not a moment 
to qualify herself for politics ! Woman cannot be spared 
long enough from the kitchen to put in a vote, though 
Abbott Lawrence can be spared from the counting-house, 
though General Gaines or Scott can be spared from the 
camp, though the Lorings and the Choates can be spared 
from the courts. This is the argument : Stephen Girard 
cannot go to Congress ; he is too busy ; therefore, no man 
ever shall. Because General Scott has gone to Mexico, 
and cannot be President, therefore no man shall be. Be- 
cause A. B. is a sailor, gone on a whaling voyage, to be 
absent for three years, and cannot vote, therefore no male 
inhabitant ever shall. Logic how profound ! how con- 
clusive ! Yet this is the exact reasoning in the case of 
woman. Take up the newspapers. See the sneers at 
this movement. " Take care of the children," " Make 
the clothes," " See that they are mended," " See that 
the parlors are properly arranged." Suppose we grant it 
all. Are there no women but housekeepers ? no women 
but mothers ? O yes, many ! Suppose we grant that 
the cares of a household are so heavy that they are greater 
than the cares of the president of a college ; that he who 
has the charge of some hundreds of youths is less op- 
pressed with care than the woman with three rooms and 
two children ; that though President Sparks has time for 
politics, Mrs. Brown has not. Grant that, and still we 
claim that you should be true to your theory, and allow to 
single women those rights which she who is the mistress 



24 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

of a household and mother of a family has no time to 
exercise. 

" Let women vote ! " cries one. " Why, wives and 
daughters might he Democrats, while their fathers and 
hushands were Whigs. It would never do. It would 
produce endless quarrels." And the self-satisfied ohjec- 
tor thinks he has settled the question. 

But, if the principle be a sound one, why not apply it 
in a still more important instance ? Difference of religion 
breeds more quarrels than difference in politics. Yet we 
allow women to choose their own rehgious creeds, although 
we thereby run the risk of wives being Episcopalians while 
their husbands are Methodists, or dauo;hters beino; Cath- 
olics while their fathers are Calvinists. Yet who, this 
side of Turkey, dare claim that the law should compel 
women to have no religious creed, or adopt that of their 
male relatives ? Practically, this freedom in religion has 
made no difficulty ; and probably equal freedom in politics 
would make as little. 

It is, after all, of little use to argue these social ques- 
tions. These prejudices never were reasoned up, and, 
my word for it, they will never be reasoned down. The 
freedom of the press, the freedom of labor, the freedom of 
the race in its lowest classes, was never armied to success. 
The moment you can get woman to go out into the high- 
way of life, and show by active valor what God has created 
her for, that moment this question is settled forever. One 
solid fact of a woman's making her fortune in trade will 
teach the male sex what Avoman's capacity is. I say, 
therefore, to women, there are two paths before you in 
this reform : one is, take all the laws have left you, with a 
confident and determined hand ; the other is, cheer and 
encourage, by your sympathy and aid, those noble women 
who are willing to be the pioneers in this enterprise. See 
that you stand up the firm supporters of those bold and 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 25 

5 

fearless ones who undertake to lead their sisters in this 

movement. If Elizabeth Blackwell, who, tramphng under 
foot the sneers of the other sex, took her maiden reputa- 
tion in her hand, and walked the hospitals of Europe, 
comes back the accomplished graduate of them, to offer 
her services to the women of America, and to prove that 
woman, equally with man, is qualified to do the duties and 
receive the honors and rewards of the healing art, see to 
it, women, that you greet her efforts with your smiles. 
Hasten to her side, and open your households to her 
practice. Demand to have the experiment fairly tried, 
before you admit that, in your sickness and in your dan- 
gers, woman may not stand as safely by your bedside as 
man. If you will but be true to each other, on some of 
these points, it is in the power of woman to settle, in a 
great measure, this question. Why ask aid from the other 
sex at all ? Theories are but thin and unsubstantial air 
against the solid fact of woman mingling with honor and 
profit in the various professions and industrial pursuits of 
life. Would women be true to each other, by smoothing 
the pathway of each other's endeavors, it is in their power 
to settle one great aspect of this question, without any 
statute in such case made and provided. I say, take 
your rights ! There is no law to prevent it, in one half 
of the instances. If the prejudices of the other sex and 
the supineness of your own prevent it, there is no help for 
you in the statute-books. It is for you but to speak, and 
the doors of all medical hospitals are open for the women 
by whom you make it known that you intend to be served. 
Let us have no separate, and therefore necessarily inferior, 
schools for women. Let us have no poor schools, feebly 
endowed, where woman must go to gather what help she 
may, from second-rate professors, in one branch of a pro- 
fession. No I Mothers, daughters, sisters ! say to hus- 
band, father, brother, " If this Hfe is dear to you, I intend 



26 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

to trust it, In my hour of danger, to a sister's hand. See 
to it, therefore, you who are the gi'jdes of society and 
heads of those institutions, if you love your mother, sister, 
wife, daughter, see to it that you provide these chosen 
assistants of mine the means to become disciphned and 
competent advisers in that momentous hour, for I will 
have no other." When you shall say that, Harvard Uni- 
versity, and every other university, and every medical 
institution, will hasten to open their doors. You who long 
for the admission of woman to professional life and the 
higher ranks of intellectual exertion, up, and throw into 
her scale tliis omnipotent weight of your determination to 
be served by her, and by no other ! In this matter, what 
you decide is law. 

There is one other light in which this subject is to be 
considered, — the freedom of ballot ; and with a few words 
upon that, I will close these desultory remarks. As there 
is no use in educating a human being for nothing, so the 
thing is an impossibility. Horace Mann says, in the letter 
which has been read here, that he intends to write a lec- 
ture on Woman ; and I doubt not he will take the stand 
which he has always done, that she should be book-taught 
for some dozen years, and then retire to domestic life, or 
the school-room. Would he give sixpence for a boy who 
could only say that he had been shut up for those years in 
a school ? The unfledged youth who comes from college, 
— what is he ? He is a man, and has been subjected to 
seven years' tutoring ; but man though he is, until he has 
walked up and down the paths of life, until he receives his 
education in the discipline of the world, in the stimulus of 
motive, in the hope of gain, in the desire of honor, in the 
love of reputation, he has got, in nine cases out of ten, no 
education at all. Profess to educate woman for her own 
amusement ! Profess to educate her in science, that she 
may go home and take care of her cradle ! Teach her the 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 27 

depths of statesmanship and political economy, that she 
may smile sweetly when her husband comes home ! " It 
is not the education man gets from books," it was well 
said by your favorite statesman, " but the lessons he 
learns from life and society, that profit him most highly.'* 
"Xe monde est le livi-e des femmes.'^^ Of this hook you 
deprive her. You give her nothing but man's httle 
printed primers ; you make for her a world of dolls, and 
then complain that she is frivolous. You deprive her of 
all the lessons of practical out-door life ; you deprive her 
of all the stimulus which the good and great of all nations, 
all societies, have enjoyed, the world's honors, its gold^ 
and its fame, and then you coolly ask of her, " Why ar(i 
you not as well disciplined as we are ? " I know therti 
are great souls who need no stimulus but love of trutli 
and of growth, whom mere love of labor allures to thei 
profoundest investigations ; but these are the exceptions, 
not the rule. We legislate, we arrange society, for tho 
masses, not the exceptions. 

Responsibility is one instrument — a great instrument— • 
of education, both moral and intellectual. It sharpens tlw 
faculties. It unfolds the moral nature. It makes the care- 
less prudent, and turns recklessness into sobriety. LooL 
at the young wife suddenly left a widow, with the care of 
her children's education and entrance into life thrown upon 
her. How prudent and sagacious she becomes ! How 
fruitful in resources and comprehensive in her views ! 
How miich intellect and character she surprises her old 
friends with ! Look at the statesman bold and reckless in 
opposition ; how prudent, how thoughtful, how timid, he 
becomes, the moment he is in office, and feels that a na- 
tion's welfare hangs on his decisions ! Woman can never 
study those great questions that interest and stir most 
deeply the human mind, until she studies them under the 
mingled stimulus and check of tliis responsibility. And 



28 wofciN' 



S RIGHTS. 



until her intellect has been tested by such questions, stud- 
ied under such influences, we shall never be able to decide 

what it is. • 

One great reason, then, besides its justice, why we 
would claim the ballot for woman, is this : because the great 
school of this people is the jury-box and the ballot-box. 
Tocqueville, after travelling hi this country, went away 
with the conviction that, valuable as the jury trial was for 
the investigation of facts and defence of the citizens, its 
value even in these respects was no greater than as it was 
the school of civil education open to all the people. The 
education of the American citizen is found in his interest 
in the debates of Congress, — the earnest personal interest 
with which he seeks to fathom political questions. It is 
when the mind, profoundly stirred by the momentous stake 
at issue, rises to its most gigantic efforts, when the great cri- 
sis of some national convulsion is at hand, — it is then that 
strong political excitement lifts the people up in advance 
of the age, heaves a whole nation on to a higher platform 
/of intellect and morality. Great political questions stir 
the deepest nature of one half the nation ; but they pass 
far above and over the heads of the other half. Yet, mean- 
ivhile, theorists wonder that the first have their whole 
mature unfolded, and the others will persevere in being 
dwarfed. Now, this great, world-wide, practical, ever- 
present education we claim for woman. Never, until it 
is granted her, can you decide what will be her ability. 
Deny statesmanship to woman ? What ! to the sisters of 
Elizabeth of England, Isabella of Spain, Maria Theresa 
of Austria ; ay, let me add, of Elizabeth Heyrick, who, 
when the intellect of all England was at fault, and wan- 
dering in the desert of a false philosophy, — when Brougham 
and Romilly, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and all the other 
great and philanthropic minds of England, were at fault 
and at a dead-lock with the West India question and negro 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 29 

elavery, — wrote out, with the statesmanHke intellect of 
a Quaker woman, the simple yet potent charm, — Imme- 
diate, Unconditional Emancipation, — which solved the 
problem, and gave freedom to a race ! How noble the 
conduct of those men ! With an alacrity which does honoi.' 
to their statesmanship, and proves that they recognized the 
inspired voice wlien tliey heard it, they sat down at the 
feet of that woman-statesman, and seven years under her 
instruction did more for the settlement of the ^I'eatest social 
question that had ever convulsed England, than had been 
done by a century, of more or less effort, before. O no 1 
you cannot read history, unless you read it upside down, 
without admitting that woman, cramped, fettered, excluded;, 
degraded as she has been, has yet sometimes, Avith one ray 
of her instinctive genius, done more to settle great ques 
tions than all the cumbrous intellect of the other sex haj 
achieved. 

It is, therefore, on the ground of natural justice, and ou 
the ground again of the highest expediency, and yet agaiiA 
it is because woman, as an immortal and intellectual being, 
has a right to all the means of education, — it is on theso 
grounds that we claim for her the civil rights and privileges 
which man enjoys. 

I will not enlarge now on another most important aspect 
of this question, the value of the contemplated change in & 
physiological point of view. Our dainty notions have mad© 
woman such a hot-house plant, that one half the sex are 
invalids. The mothers of the next g-eneration are invalids. 

o 

Better that our women, like the German and Italian girls, 
should labor on the highway, and share in the toil of har- 
vest, than pine and sicken in the in-door and sedentary 
routine to which our superstition condemns them. But I 
leave this sad topic for other hands. 

One word more. "VVe heard to-day a veiy profound 
and eloquent address as to the :ourse which it is most 



80 W?5l!ttI'S RIGHTS. 

expedient for woman to pursue in regard to the inadequate 
remuneration extended to her sex. The woman of do- 
mestic Hfe receives but about one third the amount paid 
to a man for similar or far Hghter services. The woman 
of out-door labor has about the same. The best woman 
employments are subject to a discount of some forty or fifty 
per cent on the wages paid to males. It is futile, if it 
were just, to blame individuals for this. We have all 
been burdened long by a common prejudice and a common 
ignorance. The remedy is not to demand that the manu- 
facturer shall pay his workmen more, that the employer 
of domestics shall pay them more. It is not the capitalist's 
fault. We inveigh against the wealthy capitalist, but it is 
not exclusively his fault. It is as much the fault of society 
jtself. It is the fault of that timid conservatism, which 
nets its face like flint against everything new ; of a servile 
press, which knows so well, by personal experience, how 
much fools and cowards are governed by a sneer. It is 
the fault of silly women, ever holding up their idea of 
what is '-'■ lady-like " as a Gorgon head to frighten their 
rasters from earning bread, — themselves, in their folly, 
the best answer to a weak prejudice they mistake for 
jirgument. It is the fault of that pulpit which declares it 
indecorous in woman to labor, except in certain occupa- 
tions, and thus crowds the whole mass of working-women 
into two or three employments, making them rivet each 
other's chains. Do you ask me the reason of the low 
wages paid for female labor ? It is this. There are about 
as many women as men obliged to rely for bread on their 
own toil. Man seeks employment anywhere, and of any 
kind. No one forbids him. If he cannot make a living 
by one trade, he takes another ; and the moment any trade 
becomes so crowded as to make wages fall, men leave it, 
and wages will rise again. Not so with woman. The 
whole mass of women must find employment in two oi 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 81 

three occupations. The consequence is, there are more 
women in each of these than can be employed ; they kill 
each other by competition. Suppose there is as much 
sewing required in a city as one thousand hands can do. 
If the tailors could find only five hundred women to sew, 
they would be obliged to pay them whatever they asked. 
But let the case be, as it usually is, that there are five 
thousand women waiting for that work, unable to turn to 
any other occupation, and doomed to starve if they fail to 
get a share of that ; we see at once that their labor, being 
a drug in the market, must be poorly paid for. She can- 
not say, as man would, '' Give me so much, or I will seek 
another trade." She must accept whatever is offered, and 
often underbid her sister, that she may secure a share. 
Any article sells cheap, when there is too much of it in 
the market. Woman's labor is cheap because there is too 
much of it in the market. All women's trades are over- 
crowded, because they have only two or three to choose 
from. But open to her, now, other occupations. Open 
to her the studio of the artist, — let her enter there ; open 
to her the office practice, at least, of the lawyers, — let 
her go there ; open to her all in-door trades of society, to 
begin with, and let women monopolize them. Take from 
the crowded and starved ranks of the needlewomen of 
New York some for the arts of design, some for the coun- 
ter, some to minister in our public hbraries, some for our 
public registries, some to keep merchants' accounts, and 
some to feel the pulse ; and the consequence will be, that, 
hke every other independent laborer, like their male breth- 
ren, they may make their own terms, and will be fairly 
paid for their labor. It is competition in too narrow lists 
that starves women in our cities ; and those lists are drawn 
narrow by superstition and prejucice. 

Woman is ground down, by the competition of her 
sisters, to the very point of starvation. Heavily taxed, 



32 T^IHIIWN'S RIGHTS. 

ill-paid, m degradation and misery, is it to be wondered at 
that she yields to the temptation of wealth ? It is the 
same with men ; and thus we recruit the ranks of vice by 
the prejudices of custom and society. We corrupt the 
whole social fabric, that woman may be confined to two 
or three employments. How much do we suffer through 
the tyranny of prejudice ! When we penitently and 
gladly give to the energy and the intellect and the enter- 
prise of woman their proper reward, their appropriate 
employment, this question of wages will settle itself; and 
it will never be settled at all until then. 

This question is intimately connected with the great 
social problem, — the vices of cities. You who hang your 
heads in terror and shame, in view of the advancing de- 
moralization of modern civilized life, and turn away with 
horror-struck faces, look back now to these social preju- 
dices, which have made you close the avenues of profitable 
employment in the face of woman, and reconsider the 
conclusions you have made ! Look back, I say, and see 
whether you are surely right here. Come up with us and 
argue the question, and say whether this most artificial 
delicacy, this childish prejudice, on whose Moloch altar 
you sacrifice the virtue of so many, is worthy the exalted 
worship you pay it. Consider a moment. From what 
sources are the ranks of female profligacy recruited ? A 
few mere giddiness hurries to ruin. Their protection 
would be in that character and sound common-sense which 
a wider interest in practical life would generally create. 
In a few, the love of sensual gratification, grown over- 
strong, because all the other powers are dormant for want 
of exercise, wrecks its unhappy victim. The medicine for 
these would be occupation, awaking intellect, and stirring 
their highest energies. Give any one an earnest interest 
in life, something to do, something that kindles emulation, 
and soon the gratification of the sensos sinks into proper 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 33 

subordination. It is idle heads that are tempted to mis- 
chief: and she is emphatically idle half of whose nature is 
unemployed. Why does man so much oftener than 
woman surmount a few years or months of sensual grati- 
fication, and emerge into a worthier life ? It is not solely 
because the world's judgment is so much harder upon her. 
Man can immerse himself in business that stirs keenly all 
his faculties, and thus he smothers passion in honorable 
cares. An ordinary woman, once fallen, has no busy and 
stirring life in which to take refuge, where intellect will 
contend for mastery with passion, and where vu-tue is 
braced by hio-h and active thouo-hts. Passion comes back 
to the '•'• empty ^^"^ though " swept and garnished" cham- 
bers, bringing with him more devils than before. But, 
undoubtedly, the great temptation to this vice is the love 
of dress, of wealth, and the luxuries it secui'es. Facts will 
jostle theories aside. Whether we choose to acknowledge 
it or not, there are many women, earning two or three 
dollars a week, who feel that they are as capable as their 
brothers of earning hundreds, if they could be permitted 
to exert themselves as freely. Fretting to see the coveted 
rewards of life forever forbidden them, they are tempted 
to shut their eyes on the character of the means by which 
a taste, however short, may be gained of the wealth and 
luxury they sigh for. Open to man a fair field for his 
industry, and secure to him its gains, and nine hundred 
and ninety-nine men out of every thousand will disdain to 
steal. Open to woman a fair field for her industry, let 
her do anything her hands find to do, and enjoy her gains, 
and nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of every 
thousand will disdain to debase themselves for dress or ease. 
Of this great social problem — to cure or lessen the ^dce 
of cities — there is no other solution, except what this 
movement offers you. It is, to leave woman to choose 
her own employments for herself, responsible, as we are. 



84 \?f5!ii^'S RIGHTS. 

to the common Creator, and not to her fellow-man. I 
exhort you, therefore, to look at this question in the spirit 
in which I have endeavored to present* it to you. It is no 
fanciful, no superficial movement, based on a few indi- 
vidual tastes, in morbid sympathy with tales of individual 
suffering. It is a great social protest against the very 
fabric of society. It is a question which goes down — we 
admit it, and are willing to meet the issue — goes down 
beneath the altar at which you worship, goes down be- 
neath this social system in which you live. And it is true 
— no denying it — that, if we are right, the doctrines 
preached from New England pulpits are wrong ; it is true 
that all this affected horrc^ at woman's deviation fi'om her 
sphere is a mistake, — a mistake fraught with momentous 
consequences. Understand us. We blink no fair issue. 
We throw down the gauntlet. We have counted tlie 
cost; we know the yoke and burden Ave assume. We 
know the sneers, the lying frauds of misstatement and 
misrepresentation, that await us. We have counted all ; 
and it is but the dust in the balance and the small dust in 
the measure, compared with the inestimable blessing of 
doing justice to one half of the human species, of curing 
this otherwise immedicable wound, stopping this over- 
flowing fountain of corruption, at the very source of 
civihzed life. Truly, it is the great question of the age. 
It looks all others out of countenance. It needs little aid 
from legislation. Specious objections, after all, are not 
arguments. We know we are right. We only ask an 
oi)portunity to argue the question, to set it full before the 
people, and then leave it to the intellects and the hearts 
of our country, confident that the institutions under 
which we live, and the education which other reforms 
have already given to both sexes, have created men and 
women capable of solving a problem even more difficult, 
and meeting a change even more radical, than this. 



PUBLIC OPINION 



M 



R. PRESIDENT: — I have been tlilnking, while 
sittmg here, of the different situations of the Anti- 
slavery cause now and one year ago, when the last anni- 
versary of this Society was held. To some, it may seem 
that we had more sources of interest and of public excite- 
ment on that occasion than we have now. We had with us, 
during apportion, at least, of that session, the eloquent ad- 
vocate of our cause on the other side of the water. f We 
had the local excitement and the deep interest which the 
first horror of the Fugitive Skive Bill had aroused. We 
had, I believe, some fugitives, just arrived from the house 
of bondag-^. It may seem to many that, meeting as we do 
to-day robbed of all these, we must be content with a ses- 
sion more monotonous and less effectual in arousincr the 
community. But when we look over the whole land ; 
when we look back upon what has taken place in our own 
Commonwealth, at Christiana, at Syracuse ; look at the 
passage through the country of the great Hungarian ; at 
the present state of the public mind, — it seems to me that 
no year, during the existence of the Society, has presented 
more encouraging aspects to the Abolitionists. The views 
wdiich our friend (Parker Pillsbury) has just presented 
are those upon which, in our most sober calculation, we 

* Speech before the Massachusetts Antislaverj Society, at the MelodeoOj 
Wednesday CT-ening, January 28, 1852. 
t George Thompsou, Esq., M. P. 



36 puBLf^pmiON. 

ought to rely. Give us time, and, as he said, talk is all- 
powerful. We are apt to feel ourselves overshadowed in 
the presence of colossal institutions. We are apt, in com- 
ing up to a meeting of this kind, to ask what a few hun- 
dred or a feAV thousand persons can do against the weight 
of government, the mountainous odds of majorities, the 
influence of the press, the power of the pulpit, the organi- 
zation of parties, the omnipotence of wealth. At times, to 
carry a favorite purpose, leading statesmen have endeav- 
ored to cajole the people into tlie idea that this age was 
like the past, and that a " rub-a-dub agitation," as ours is 
contemptuously styled, was only to be despised. The time 
has been when, as our friend observed, from the steps of 
the Revere House — yes, and from the depots of New 
York railroads — Mr. Webster has described this Anti- 
slavery movement as a succession of lectures in school- 
houses, — the mere efforts of a few hundred men and 
women to talk together, excite each other, arouse the 
public, and its only result a little noise. He knew better. 
He knew better the times in which he lived. No matter 
where you meet a dozen earnest men pledged to a new 
idea, — wherever you have met them, you have met the 
bemnninor of a revolution. Revolutions are not made : 
they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an 
oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid 
far back. The child feels ; he grows into a man, and 
thinks ; another, perhaps, speaks, and the world acts out 
the thought. And this is the history of modern society. 
Men undervalue the Antislaveiy movement, because 
they imagine you can always put your finger on some 
illustrious moment in history, and say, here commenced 
the £:reat chan^-e which has come over the nation. Not so. 
The beginning of great changes is like the rise of the Mis- 
sissippi. A clilld must stoop and gather away the pebbles 
to find it. But soon it swells broader and broader, beai-9 



PUBLIC OPINION. 37 

on its ample bosom the navies of a mighty repubhc, fills 
the Gulf, and divides a continent. 

I remember a story of Napoleon which illustrates my 
meaning. We are apt to trace his control of France to 
some noted victory, to the time when he camped in the 
Tuileries, or when he dissolved the Assembly by the 
stamp of his foot. He reigned in fact when his hand was 
first felt on the helm of die vessel of state, and that was 
far back of the time when he had conquered in Italy, or 
his name had been echoed over two contments. It was 
on the day when five hundred irresolute men were met in 
that Assembly which called itself, and pretended to be, the 
government of France. They heard that the mob of Paris 
was coming the next morning, thirty thousand strong, to 
turn them, as was usual in those days, out of doors. And 
where did this seemingly great power go for its support and 
refuge ? They sent Tallien to seek out a boy lieutenant, — 
the shadow of an ofiicer, — so thin and pallid that, when he 
was placed on the stand before them, the President of the 
Assembly, fearful, if the fate of France rested on the 
shrunken form, the ashy cheek before him, that all hope 
was gone, asked, " Young man, can you protect the As- 
sembly?" And the stern lips of the Corsican boy parted 
only to reply, "' I always do what I undertake." Then 
and there Napoleon ascended his throne ; and the next 
day, from the steps of St. Roche, thundered forth the 
cannon which taught the mob of Paris, for the first time, 
that it had a master. That Avas the commencement of the 
Empire. So the Antislavery movement commenced un- 
heeded in that " obscure hole " which Mayor Otis could 
not find, occupied by a printer and a black boy. 

In working these great changes, in such an age as ours, 
the so-called statesman has far less influence than the many 
little men who, at various points, are silently maturing 
a regeneration of public opinion. This is a reading and 



38 PUBcfe OPINION. 

thinking age, and great interests at stake quicken the gen- 
eral intellect. Stagnant times have been when a great 
mind, anchored in error, might snag th*e slow-moving cur- 
rent of society. Such is not our era. Nothing but Free- 
dom, Justice, and Trutli is of any permanent advantage to 
the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is 
always tending. In our day, great questions about them 
have called forth all the energies of the common mind. 
Error suffers sad treatmeiit in the shock of eager intellects. 
" Everybody," said Talleyrand, " is cleverer than any- 
body " ; and any name, however illustrious, which links 
itself to abuses, is sure to be overwhelmed by the impetu- 
ous current of that society which (thanks to the press and 
a reading public) is potent, always, to clear its own chan- 
nel. Thanks to the Printing-Press, the people now do 
their own thinking, and statesmen, as they are styled, — 
men in office, — have ceased to be either the leaders or the 
clogs of society. 

This view is one that Mr. Webster ridiculed in the 
depots of New York. The 'time has come when he is 
obliged to change his tone ; when he is obliged to retrace 
his steps, — to acknowledge the nature and the character 
of the age in which he lives. Kossuth comes to this coun- 
try, penniless, and an exile ; conquered on his own soil ; 
flung out as a weed upon the waters ; nothing but his voice 
left; — and the Secretary of State must meet him. Now, 
let us see what he says of his " rub-a-dub agitation,'* 
which consists of the voice only, — of the tongue, which 
*)ur friend Pillsbury has described. This is that " tongue " 
which the impudent statesman declared, from the drunken 
steps of the Revere House, ought to be silenced, — this 
tongue, which was a " rub-a-dub agitation " to be despised, 
when he spoke to the farmers of New York. 

He says, " We are too much inclined to undf?rrate the 
power of moral influence." Who is ? Nobody but a Re- 



PUBLIC OPINION. 89 

vere House statesman. " We are too much Inclined to 
underrate the power of moral influence, and the influence 
of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to 
which great men — the lights of the world and of the pres- 
ent age — have given their sanction. Who doubts that, 
in our. struggle for liberty and independence, the majestic 
eloquence of Chatham, the profound reasoning of Burke, 
the burning satire and irony of Colonel Barre, had influ- 
ences upon our fortunes here in America? They had 
influences both ways. They tended, m the first place, 
somewhat to diminish the confidence of the British minis- 
try in their hopes of success, in attempting to subjugate an 
injured people. They had influence another way, because 
all along the coasts of the country — and all our people in 
that day hved upon the coast — there was not a reading 
man who did not feel stronger, bolder, and more detei^ 
mined in the assertion of his rights, when these exhilarat- 
ing accents from the two Houses of Parhament reached 
him from beyond the seas." 

" I thank thee, Jew ! " This " rub-a-dub agitation," then, 
has influence both ways. It diminishes the confidence of 
the Administration in its power to execute the Fugitive 
Slave Law, which it has imposed so insolently on the 
people. It acts on the reading men of the nation, and in 
that single fact is the whole story of the change. Wher- 
ever you have a reading people, there every tongue, every 
press, is a power. Mr. Webster, when he ridiculed in 
New York the agitation of the Antislavery body, sup- 
posed he was living in the old feudal times, when a states- 
man was an integral element in the state, an essential 
power in himself. He must have supposed himself speak- 
ing in those ages when a great man outweighed the 
masses. He finds now that he is Hving much later, in an. 
age when the accumulated common-sense of the people 
outweighs the greatest statesman or the most influential 



40 pubSP^pinion. 

individual. Let me illustrate the difference of our times 
and the past in this matter, by their difference in another 
respect. The time has been when men*cased in iron from 
head to foot, and disciplined by long years of careful in- 
struction, went to battle. Those were the days of nobles 
and knights ; and in such times, ten knights, clad in steel, 
feared not a whole field of unarmed peasantry, and a hun- 
dred men-at-arms have conquered thousands of the com- 
mon people, or held them at bay. Those were the times 
when Winkelried, the Swiss patriot, led his host against 
the Austrian phalanx, and, finding it impenetrable, to the 
thousands of Swiss who threw themselves on the serried 
lances, gathered a dozen in his arms, and, drawing them 
together, made thus an opening in the close-set ranks of 
the Austrians, and they were overborne by the actual mass 
of numbers. Gunpowder came, and then any finger that 
could pull a trigger was equal to the highest born and the 
best disciplined ; knightly armor, and horses clad in steel, 
went to the ground before the courage and strength which 
dwelt in the arm of the peasant, as well as that of the 
prince. What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press 
has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer clad 
in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his 
judge. Every thoughtful man, the country through, who 
makes up an opinion, is his jury to which he answers, and the 
tribunal to which he must bow. Mr. Webster, therefore, 
does not overrate the power of this " rub-a-dub agitation," 
wliich Kossuth has now adopted, " stealing our thunder." 
[Laughter and applause.] He does not overrate the power 
of this " rub-a-dub agitation," when he says, " Another 
great mistake, gentlemen, is sometimes made. [Yes, in 
Bowdoin Square !] We think nothing powerful enough 
to stand before despotic power. There is something strong 
enough, quite strong enough ; and if properly exerted, it 
will prove itself so ; and that is, the power of intelligent 



PUBLIC OPINION. 41 

public opinion." " I thank thee, Jew ! " That opinion 
is formed, not only in Congress, or on hotel steps ; it is 
made also in the school-houses, in the town-houses, at the 
hearth-stones, in the railroad-cars, on board the steam- 
boats, in the social circle, in these Antislaverj gatherings 
which he despises. Mark you ; There is nothing powerful 
enough to stand before it ! It may be a self-styled divine 
institution ; it may be the bank-vaults of New England ; 
it may be the mining interests of Pennsylvania ; it may 
be the Harwich fishermen, wliom he told to stand by the 
Union, because its bunting protected their decks ; it may 
be the factory operative, whom he told to uphold the 
Union, because it made his cloth sell for half a cent 
more a yard; it may be a parchment Constitution, or 
even a Fugitive Slave Bill, signed by Millard Fillmore ! ! ! 
— no matter, all are dust on the threshing-floor of a read- 
ing public, once roused to indignation. Remember this, 
when you would look down upon a meeting of a few hun- 
dreds in the one scale, and the fanatic violence of State 
Street in the other, that there is nothing, Daniel Webster 
being witness, strong enough to stand against public opin- 
ion, — and if the tongue and the press are not parents of 
that, what is ? 

Napoleon said, "I fear three newspapers more than a 
hundred thousand bayonets." Mr. Webster now is of the 
same opinion. " There is not a monarch on earth," he 
says, " whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the 
progress of opinion and the sentiment of the just and 
InteUigent part of the people." " I thank thee, Jew ! " 
We have been told often, that it was nothing but a morbid 

sentiment that was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Bill, 

it was a sentiment of morbid philanthropy. Grant it all. 
But take care, Mr. Statesman ; cure or change it in time, 
else it will beat all your dead institutions to dust. Hearts 
and sentiments are ahve, and we all know that the gentlest 



4ii PUBLIC OPINION. 

of Nature's growths or motions will, In time, burst asunder 
or wear away the proudest dead-weight man can heap 
upon them. If this be the power of the gentlest growth, 
let the stoutest heart tremble before the tornado of a 
people roused to terrible vengeance by the sight of long 
years of cowardly and merciless oppression, and oft- 
repeated instances of selfish and calculating apostasy. 
You may build your Capitol of granite, and j^Ile it high 
as the Rocky Mountains ; If It is founded on or mixed up 
with Iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in time beat It down. 
" There Is no monarch on earth whose throne Is not liable 
to be shaken by the sentiment of the just and Intelligent 
part of the people." What Is this but a recantation, — 
doing penance for the Impudence uttered In Bowdoin 
Square ? Surely this Is the white sheet and lighted torch 
which the Scotch Church imposed as penance on Its erring 
members. Who would imagine, ''that the same man Avho 
said of the public discussion of the Slavery question, that it 
must be put down, could have dictated this sentiment, — 
" It becomes us, In the station which we hold, to let tliat 
public opinion, so far as we form it, have free course " ? 
What was the haughty threat we heard from Bowdoin 
Square a year ago ? " This agitation must be put down." 
Now, " It becomes us. In the station which we hold, to let 
that public opinion have free course." Behold the great 
doughface cringing before the calm eye of Kossuth, who 
had nothino; but "rub-a-dub aoitatlon " with which to 
rescue Hungary from the bloody talons of the Austrian 
eagle ! 

This Is statesmanship ! The statesmanship that says to 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to-day, " Smother 
those prejudices," and to-morrow, " There Is no throne on 
the broad earth strong enough to stand up against the 
sentiment of justice." AVhat is that but the '• preju- 
dices " of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against 



PUBLIC OPINION. 43 

man-lmnting ? And this is the man before whom tlie 
press and the pulpit of the country would have had the 
Abolitionists bow their heads, and lay their mouths in the 
dust, instead of holding fast to the eternal principles of 
justice and right ! 

It would be idle, to be sure, to base any argument on 
an opinion of Mr. Webster's. Like the chameleon, lie 
takes his hue, on these subjects, from the air he breathes. 
He has his " October sun " opinion, and his Faneuil 
Hall opinions. But the recantation here is at least notice- 
able ; and his testimony to the power of the masses is 
more valuable as coming from an unwilling witness. The 
best of us are conscious of being, at times, somewhat awed 
by the colossal institutions about us, which seem to be 
opposing our progress. There are those who occasionally 
weary of this moral suasion, and sigh for something tangi- 
ble ; some power that they can feel, and see its operation. 
The advancing tide you cannot mark. The gem forms 
unseen. The granite increases and crumbles, and you can 
hardly mark either process. The great change in a na- 
tion's opinion is the same. We stand here to-day, and if 
we look back twenty years, we can see a change in public 
opinion ; yes, we can see a great change. Then the great 
statesmen had pledged themselves not to talk on this sub- 
ject. They have been made to talk. These hounds 
have been whipped into the traces of the nation's car, not 
by three newspapers, which Napoleon dreaded, but by one, 
[Cheers.] The great parties of the country have been 
broken to pieces and crumbled. The great sects have 
been broken to pieces. Suppose you cannot put your 
finger upon an individual fact ; still, in the great result, 
you see what Webster tells us in his speech : " De- 
pend upon it, gentlemen, that between these two rival 
powers, — the autocratic power, maintained by arms and 
force, and the popular power, maintained by opinion, — 



44 PUBLIC OPINION. 

the fornitir js constantly decreasing ; and, thank God ! the 
latter is constantly increasing. Real hnman liberty is 
gaining the ascendant ; — [he must feel sad at that !] — and 
the part which we have to act in all tliis great drama 
is to show ourselves in favor of those rights ; to uphold 
our ascendency, and to carry it on, until we shall see it 
culminate in the highest heaven over our heads." 

Now I look upon this speech as the most remarkable 
Mr. Webster has ever made on the antislavery agitation 
to which we are devoted, — as a most remarkable confes- 
sion, under the circumstances. I read it here and to you, 
because, in the circle I see around me, the larger propor- 
tion are Abolitionists, — men attached to the movement 
which this meeting represents, — men whose thoughts are 
occasionally occupied with the causes and with the eiFects 
of its real progress. I would force from the reluctant lips 
of the Secretary of State his testimony to the real power 
of the masses. I said that the day was, before gunpowder, 
when the noble, clad in steel, was a match for a thousand. 
Gunpowder levelled peasant and prince. The printing- 
press has done the same. In the midst of thinking people, 
in the long run, there are no so-called " great " men. 
The accumulated intellect of the masses is greater than 
the heaviest brain God ever gave to a single man. Web- 
ster, though he may gather into his own person the 
confidence of parties, and the attachment of thousands 
throughout the country, is but a feather's weight in the 
balance against the average of public sentiment on the 
subject of slavery. A newspaper paragraph, a county 
meeting, a gathering for conversation, a change in the 
character of a dozen individuals, — these are the several 
fountains and sources of public opinion. And, friends, 
when we gather, month after month, at such meetings as 
these, we should encourage ourselves with considerations 
of this kind : — that we live in an age of democratic 



PUBLIC OPINION. 45 

equality ; that, for a moment, a party may stand against 
the age, l)ut in the end it goes by the board ; that the 
man who hiunches a sound argument, who sets on two 
feet a starthng fact, and bids it travel from Maine to 
Georgia, is just as certain that in the end he will change 
the government, as if, to destroy the Capitol, he had 
placed gunpowder under the Senate-chamber. Natural 
philosophers tell us, that, if you will only multiply the 
simplest force into enough time, it will equal the greatest. 
So it is with the slow intellectual movement of the masses. 
It can scarcely be seen, but it is a constant movement : it 
is the shadow on the dial ; never still, though never seen 
to move ; it is the tide, it is the ocean, gaining on the 
proudest and strongest bulwarks that human art or 
strength can build. It may be defied for a moment, but 
in the end Nature always triumphs. So the race, if it 
cannot drag a Webater along with it, leaves him behind 
and forgets him. [Loud cheers.] The race is rich 
enough to afford to do without the greatest intellects God 
ever let the Devil buy. Stranded along the past, there are 
a great many dried numimies of dead intellects, which the 
race found too heavy to drag forward. 

I hail the almighty power of the tongue. I swear 
allegiance to the omnipotence of the press. The people 
never err. " Vox populi, vox Dei,^^ — the voice of the 
people is the voice of God. I do not mean this of any 
single verdict which the people of to-day may record. In 
time, the selfishness of one class neutralizes the selfishness 
of another. The interests of one age clash against the 
interests of another ; but in the great result the race 
always means right. The people always mean right, and 
in the end they will have the right. I believe in the 
twenty millions — not the twenty millions that live now, 
necessarily — to arrange this question of slavery, wdiich 
priests and politicians have sought to keep out of sight 



46 PUBLIC OPINION. 

They have kept it locked up in the Sen ate -chamber, they 
have hidden it behind the communion-table, they have 
appealed to the superstitious and idolatrous veneration for 
the State and the Union to avoid this question, and so 
have kept it fi'om the influence of the great democratic 
tendencies of the masses. But change all this, drag it 
from its concealment, and give it to the people ; launch it 
on the age, and all is safe. It will find a safe harbor. A 
man is always selfish enough for himself. The soldier 
will be selfish enough for himself; the merchant will be 
selfish enough for himself; yes, he will be willing to go to 
hell to secure his own fortune, but he Avill not be ready to 
go there to make the fortune of his neighbor. Rarely 
is any man willing to sacrifice his own character for the 
benefit of his neighbor ; and whenever we shall be able to 
show this nation that the interests of a class, not of the 
whole, the interests of a portion of the country, not of the 
masses, are subserved by holding our fellow-men in bond- 
age, then we shall spike the guns of the enemy, or get 
their artillery on our side. 

I want you to turn your eyes from institutions to men. 
Tlie difficulty of the present day and with us is, we are 
bullied by institutions. A man gets up in the pulpit, or 
sits on tlie bench, and we allow ourselves to be bullied by 
the judge or the clergyman, when, if he stood side by side 
with us, on the brick pavement, as a simple individual, his 
ideas would not have disturbed our clear thoughts an hour. 
Now the dvity of each antislavery man is simply this, — 
Stand on the pedestal of your own individual independence, 
sunnnon these institutions about you, and judge them. 
The question is deep enough to require this judgment of 
you. This is what the cause asks of you, my friends ; and 
the moment you shall be willing to do this, to rely upon 
yourselves, that moment the truths I have read from the 
lips of one'^whom the country regards as its greatest states- 



PUBLIC OPINION. 47 

mail will shine over your patli, assuring you that out of 
this agitation, as sure as the sun shines at noonday, the future 
character of the American government will be formed. 

If we lived in England, if we lived in France, the phi- 
losophy of our movement might be diftercnt, for there 
stand accumulated wealth, hungry cliurches, and old 
nobles, — a class whicli popular agitation but slowly 
affects. To these public opinion is obliged to bow. We 
have seen, for instance, the agitation of 1848 in Europe, 
deep as it was, seemingly triumphant as it was for six 
months, retire, beaten, before the undisturbed foundations 
of the o-overnments of the Continent. You recollect, no 
doubt, the tide of popular enthusiasm which rolled from 
the Bay of Biscay to the very feet of the Czar, and it 
seemed as if Europe was melted into one republic. Men 
thought the new generation had indeed come. We 
waited twelve months, and " the turrets and towers of old 
institutions — the church, law, nobility, government — 
reappeared above the subsiding wave." Now there are no 
such institutions here ; — no law that can abide one moment 
when popular opinion demands its abrogation. The gov- 
ernment is wrecked the moment the newspapers decree 
it. The penny papers of this State in the Sims case did 
more to dictate the decision of Chief Justice Shaw, than 
the Legislature that sat in the State-House, or the statute- 
book of Massachusetts. I mean what I say. The penny 
papers of New York do more to govern this country than 
the White House at Washington. Mr. Webster says we 
liv2 '•inder a government of laws. He was never more 
mistaken, even when he thought the antislavery agita-^ 
tion could be stopped. We live under a government of 
me*i — and morning newspapers. [Applause.] Bennett 
and Horace Greeley are more really Presidents of the 
United States than Millard Fillmore; Daniel Webster 
-limself cannot even get a nomination. Why ? Because, 



48 PUBLIC OPINION. 

long ago, the ebbing tide of public opinion left him a 
wreck, stranded on the side of the popular current. 

We live under a government of men. The Constitu- 
tion is nothing in South CaroHna, but the black law is 
everything. The law that says the colored man shall sit 
in the jury-box in the city of Boston is nothing. Why ? 
Because the Mayor and Aldermen, and the Selectmen of 
Boston, for the last fifty years, have been such slaves of 
colorphobia, that they did not choose to execute this law 
of the Commonwealth. I might go through the statute- 
book, and show you the same result. Now if this be 
true against us, it is true for us. Remember, that the 
penny papers may be starved into antislavery, whenever 
we shall put behind them an antislavery public senti- 
ment. Wilberforce and Clarkson had to vanquish the 
moneyed power of England, the West India interest, and 
overawe the peerage of Great Britain, before they con- 
quered. The settled purpose of the great middle class 
had to wait till all this was accomplished. The moment 
we have the control of public opinion, — the women and 
the children, the school-houses, the school-books, the litera- 
ture, and the newspapers, — that moment we have settled 
the question. 

Men blame us for the bitterness of our language and the 
])ersonality of our attacks. It results from our position. 
The great mass of the people can never be made to stay 
and argue a long question. They must be made to feel it, 
through the hides of their idols. When you have launched 
your spear into the rhinoceros hide of a Webster or a Ben- 
ton, every Whig and Democrat feels it. It is on this 
principle that every reform must take for its text the 
mistakes of 2;reat men. God mves us m'eat scoundrels, for 
texts to antislavery sermons. See to it, when Nature 
has provided you a monster like Webster, that you exhibit 
him — himself a whole menaorerie — throuo:hout the coun 



PUBLIC OPINION. 49 

try. [Great clieering.] It is not often, In the wide world's 
history, that you see a man so lavishly gifted by nature, 
and called, in the concurrence of events, to a position like 
that which he occupied on the seventh of March, surrender 
his great power, and quench the high hopes of his race. 
No man, since the age of Luther, has ever held in liis 
hand, so palpably, the destinies and character of a mighty 
people. He stood like the Hebrew prophet betwixt tlie 
living and the dead. He had but to have upheld the cross 
of common truth and honesty, and the black dishonor of 
two hundred years would have been effaced forever. He 
bowed his vassal head to the temptations of the flesh and 
of lucre. He gave himself up into the lap of the Delilah 
of slavery, for the mere promise of a nomination, and the 
greatest hour of the age was bartered away, — not for a 
mess of pottage, but for the promise of a mess of pottage, 
— a promise, thank God ! which is to be broken. [En- 
thusiastic applause.] I say, it is not often that Providence 
permits the eyes of twenty millions of thinking people to 
behold the fall of another Lucifer, from the very battle- 
ments of Heaven, down into that " lower deep of the 
lowest deep" of hell. [Great sensation.] On such a 
text, how effective should be the sermon ! 

Let us see to it, that, in spite of the tenderness of Amer- 
ican prejudice, in spite of the morbid charity that would 
have us rebuke the sin, but spare the sinner, in spite of 
this effeminate Christianity, that would let millions pine, 
lest one man's feelings be injured, — let us see to it, friends, 
that we be " harsh as truth and uncompromising as jus- 
tice " ; remembering always, that every single man set 
against this evil may be another Moses, every single 
thought you launch may be the thunders of anothef Na- 
poleon from the steps of another St. Roche ; remembering 
that we live not in an age of individual despotism, when a 
Charles the Fifth could set up or put down the slave-trade, 

4 1) 



PWCl 



60 PUFEIC OPINION. 

but surrounded by twenty millions, whose opinion is om- 
nipotent, — that the hundred gathered in a New England 
school-house may be the hundred wlio shall teach the rising 
men of the other half of the continent, and stereotype Free- 
dom on the banks of the Pacific ; rememberino; and wor- 
shipping reverentially the great American idea of the 
omnipotence of " tliinking men," of the " sentiment of 
justice," against which no throne is potent enough to 
stand, no Constitution sacred enough to endure. Remem 
ber this, when you go to an antislavery gathering in a 
school-house, and know that, weighed against its solemn 
purpose, its terrible resolution, its earnest thought, Web- 
ster himself, and all huckstering statesmen, in the opposite 
scale, shall kick the beam. Worshij^ping the tongue, let 
us be willing, at all times, to be known throughout the 
community as the all-talk party. The age of bullets is 
over. The age of men armed in mail is over. The ao;e 
of thrones has gone by. Tlie age of statesmen — God be 
praised ! ^ucli statesmen — is over. The age of thinking 
men has come. With the aid of God, then, every man I 
can reach I will set thinking on the subject of slavery. 
[Cheers.] The age of reading men has come. I will trv 
to imbue every newspaper with Garrisonianism. [Loud 
applause.] The age of the masses has come. Now, 
Daniel Webster counts one. Give him joy of it ! — but 
the "rub-a-dub agitation " counts at least twenty, — nine- 
teen better. Nineteen, whom no chance of nomination 
tempts to a change of opinions once a twelvemonth ; who 
need no Kossuth advent to recall them to their senses. 

What I want to impress you with is, the great weight 
that is attached to the opinion of everything that can call 
itself*a man. Give me anything that walks erect, and can 
read, and he shall count one in the millions of the Lord's 
sacramental host, which is yet to come up and trample all 
oppression in the dust. The weeds poured forth in na- 



PUBLIC OPINION. 51 

hire's lavish luxuriance, give them but time, and their tiny 
roots shall rend asunder the foundations of palaces, and 
crumble the Pyramids to the earth. We may be weeds 
in comparison with these marked men ; but in the lavish 
luxuriance of that nature which has at least allowed us to 
be ^^ thinking, reading men," I learn, Webster being my 
witness, that there is no throne potent enough to stand 
against us. It is morbid enthusiasm this that I have. 
Grant it. But they tell us that this heart of mine, which 
beats so unintermittedly in the bosom, if its force could be 
directed against a granite pillar, would wear it to dust in 
the course of a man's life. Your Capitol, Daniel Webster, 
is marble, but the pulse of every humane man is beating 
against it. God will give us time, and the pulses of men 
shall beat it down. [Loud and enthusiastic cheering.] 
Take the mines, take the Harwich fishing-skiffs, take 
the Lowell mills, take all the coin and the cotton, still 
the day must be ours, thank God, for the hearts — the 
hearts are on our side ! 

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice. A 
crazy sentimentalism like that of Peter the Hermit hurled 
half of Europe upon Asia, and changed the destinies of 
kingdoms. We may be crazy. Would to God he would 
make us all crazy enough to forget for one moment the 
cold deductions of intellect, and let these hearts of ours 
beat, beat, beat, under the promptings of a common hu- 
manity ! They have ])ut Avickedness into the statute-book, 
and its destruction is just as certain as if they had put 
gunpowder under the Capitol. That is my faith. That 
it is which turns my eye from the ten thousand news- 
papers, from the forty thousand pulpits, from the millions 
of Whigs, from the millions of Democrats, from the might 
of sect, from the marble government, from the iron army, 
from the navy riding at anchor, from all that we are accus- 
tomed to deem great and potent, — turns it back to the 
simplest child or woman, to the first murmured protest 



52 

that is heard jtcrainst bad laws. I recocrnize in it the great 
future, tlie first rumblings of that volcano destined to over- 
tlu'ow these mighty preparations, and oury in the hot lava 
of its full excitement all this laughing prosperity which now 
rests so secure on its side. 

All hail, Pnbhc Opinion ! To be sure, it is a dangerous 
thing under which to live. It rules to-day in the desire to 
obey all kinds of laws, and takes your life. It rules again 
in the love of liberty, and rescues Shadrach from Boston 
Court-House. It rules to-morrow in the manhood of him 
who loads the musket to shoot down — God be praised ! — 
the man-hunter, Gorsuch. [Applause.] It rules in Syra- 
cuse, and the slave escapes to Canada. It is our interest 
to educate this people in humanity, and in deep reverence 
for the rights of the lowest and humblest individual that 
makes up our numbers. Each man here, in fact, holds his 
property and his life dependent on the constant presence 
of an agitation like this of antislavery. Eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of liberty: power is ever stealing fi'om 
the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must 
be gathered each day, or it is rotten. The livhig sap of 
to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand 
intrusted with power becomes, either from human deprav- 
ity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. 
Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be 
prevented from hardening into a despot : only by uninter- 
mitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake 
to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material 
prosperity. All clouds, it is said, have sunshine behind 
them, and all evils have some good result ; so slavery, by 
the necessity of its abolition, has saved the freedom of the 
white race from being melted in the luxury or buried be- 
neath the gold of its own success. Never look, therefore, 
for an age when the people can be quiet and safe. At 
such times Despotism, like a shrouding mist, steals over 
the mirror of Freedom. The Dutch, a thousand years 



PUBLIC OPDaON. 53 

ago, built against the ocean their bulwarks of willow and 
mud. Do they trust to that ? Xo. Each year the patient, 
industi'ious peasant gives so much time from the cultivation 
of liis soil and the care of his children to stop the breaks 
and replace the willow which insects have eaten, that he 
may keep the land his fathers rescued from the water, and 
bid defiance to the waves that roar above his head, as if 
demanding back the broad fields man has stolen from their 
realm. 

Some men suppose that, in order to the people's govern- 
ing themselves, it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said, 
that the " Rights of Man be printed, and that every -citizen 
have a copy." As the Epicureans, two thousand years 
ago, imagined God a being who arranged this marvellous 
machinery, set it going, and then sunk to sleep. Republics 
exist only on the tenure of beuicr constantly as-itated. The 
antislavery agitation is an important, nay, an essential 
part of the machinery of the state. It is not a disease 
nor a medicine. No ; it is the normal state, — the normal 
state of the nation. Never, to our latest posterity, can we 
atford to do without prophets, like Garrison, to sth' up the 
monotony of wealth, and reawake the people to the gi'eat 
ideas that are constantly fading out of their minds, — to 
trouble the waters, that there may be health in then* flow. 
Every government is always growing corinipt. Every 
Secretary of State is, by the Very necessity of his position, 
an apostate. [Hisses and cheers.] I mean what I say. 
He is an enemy to the people, of necessity, because the 
moment he joins the government, he gra^^tates against 
that popular agitation which is the life of a republic. A 
republic is nothing but a constant overflow of lava. The 
principles of Jeflferson are not up to the principles of to- 
day. It was well said of Webster, that he knows well 
the Hancock and Adams of 1776, but he does not know 
the Hancocks and Adamses of to-dav. The republic which 
sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions, and macliinery, to 



54 pi3fii^ 



PIMON. 



politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never 
will have any. The people are to be waked to a new 
effort, just as the Church has to be re^nerated, in each 
age. The antislavery agitation is a necessity of each age, 
to keep ever on the alert this faitliful vigilance, so con- 
stantly in danger of sleep. We must live like our Pu- 
ritan fathers, who always went to church, and sat down 
to dinner, when the Indians were in their neighborhood, 
with their musket-lock on the one side and a drawn sword 
on the other. 

If I had time or voice to-night, I might proceed to a 
further development of this idea, and I trust I could make 
it clear, which I fear I have not yet done. To my con- 
viction, it is Gospel truth, that, instead of the antislavery 
agitation being an evil, or even the unwelcome cure of a 
disease in this government, the youngest child that lives 
may lay his hand on the youngest child that his gray hairs 
shall see, and say : '' The agitation was commenced 
when the Declaration of Independence was signed ; it 
took its second tide when the Antislavery Declaration 
was slo-ned in 1833, — a movement, not the cure, but the 
diet of a free people, — not the homoeopathic or the allo- 
pathic dose to which a sick land has recourse, but the 
daily cold water and the simple bread, the daily diet 
and absolute necessity, the manna of a people wander- 
ing in the wilderness." There is no Canaan in politics. 
As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but 
through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but 
in constant distrust. " In distrust," said Demosthenes, 
" are the nerves of the mind." Let us see to it that these 
sentinel nerves are ever on the alert. If the Alps, piled 
in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of Despotism, 
the ever-restless ocean is ours, which, girt within the 
eternal laws of gravitation, is pure only because never 
still. [Long-continued applause.] 



SURRENDER OF SIMS.* 



MR. PRESIDENT : I do not feel disposed to talk 
about Colonization to-night, and I am glad to think 
that, after the remarks already submitted to us, it is un- 
necessary anything more should be said on that topic. . I 
mean, the colonization of black men to Africa. I have 
been colonized myself from tliis liall for some time ; and 
m getting here again, I prefer to go back to the old note, 
and try to get the " hang of this school-house." [Laugh- 
ter.] You know Baron Munchausen says, in one of his 
marvellous stories, that it was so cold one day in Russia, 
when he began to play a tune on his trumpet, that half of 
it froze in the instrument before it could get out ; and a 
few months afterwards, he was startled, in Italy, to hear, 
of a sudden, the rest of the tune come pealing forth. We 
were somewhat frozen up a while ago in this hall, with 
George Thompson on the platform ; now we want the 
rest of the tune. [Laughter and cheers.] 

The Mail of this morning says that we have no right 
to this hall, because it was refused to the greatest states- 
man in the land, — to Daniel Webster. I believe this is 
a mistake. The Mayor and Aldermen went to him, meta* 
phorically, on their knees, and entreated the great man to 
make use of the old walls. It was the first time Faneuil 

* Speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, at raneuil Halt 
Friday ev^euing, January 30, 1852. 



REENOTl 



66 SUREENOTR OF SIMS. 

Hall ever beggeJ anybody to enter it ; but Daniel was 
pettish, and would not come. Very proper in him, too ; 
it is not the place in which to defend the Fugitive Slave 
Bill. He did right when he refused to come. Whp 
built these walls ? Peter Faneuil's ancestors were them- 
selves fuo^itives from an edict almost as cruel as the 
Fuo-itive Slave Law ; and only he whose soul and body 
refuse to crouch beneath inhuman legislation has a right 
to be heard here, — nobody else. [Cheers.] A Hugue- 
not built this hall, who was not permitted to live on the 
soil of his own beautiful France, and it may naturally be 
supposed that he dedicated it to the most ultra, outside 
idea of liberty. It is a place for the running slave to find 
a shelter, — not for a recreant statesman. [Deafening 
cheers.] 

This hall has never been made ridiculous but once ; 
never was made the laughing-stock of New England but 
once. Tiiat was about nine months ago, when the " Sims 
brigade " were left soundly asleep here, in the gray of the 
morning, while the awkward squad of Marshal Tukey 
stole down State Street with Thomas Sims, not deigning 
to ask their permission or their aid, and leaving them to 
find out, the next morning, that the great deed had been 
done, without their so much as " hearing a noise." Sol- 
diers asleep in Faneuil Hall, while mischief was doing so 
near as State Street ? O what gallant soldiers they must 
have been ! [Loud laughter and cheers.] 

Times have changed since we were here before. The 
last time I stood on this platform, there sat beside me a 
heroine worthy to sit in the hall of the old Huguenot, — 
one Elizabeth Blakeley, a mulatto girl, of Wilmington, 
N. C, who, loving freedom more than slavery, concealed 
herself on board n Boston brig, in the little narrow pas- 
sage between the side of the vessel and the partition that 
formed the cabin, — two feet eight inches of room. There 



SURRENDER OF SBIS. 57 

she lay wlille her inhuman master, almost certain she was 
on board the vessel, had it smoked with sulphm' and 
tobacco three times orer. Still she bore it. She came 
North, half frozen, in the most inclement month of the 
year, — this month. She reached Boston just able to 
crawl. Where did she come ? O those were better 
times then! She came here. Just able to stand, fresh 
from that baptism of suffering for liberty, she came here. 
We told her story. And with us that night — within 
ten feet of where I stand — sat Fredrika Bremer, the 
representative of the literature of the Old World ; and her 
humane sympathies were moved so much, that the rose- 
bud she held in her hand she sent (honoring me by 
sending it by my hand) to the first representative of 
American slavery she had seen. It was the tribute of 
Europe's heart and intellect to a heroine of the black race, 
in Faneuil Hall. Times have changed since. Not to 
speak of the incense which Miss Bremer has, half igno- 
rantly, I hope, laid on the demon altar of our iand, it would 
not be safe to put that Betsey Blakeley on this platform 
to-night ; it would not be safe for her to appear in a public 
meeting. What has changed this public opinion ? I wish 
it was some single man. I wish it was some official of the 
city, that so we could make him the scapegoat of pubhc 
indignation, let him carry it forth, and thus the fair fiime 
of our city be freed. This, Mr. President, brings me to 
my subject. The resolutions I wish to speak to are these. 
I think they ought to be read in Faneuil Hall, at this, the 
first meeting the Abolitionists have held here since the 
foul deed of April 12th disgraced the city. I feel that 
these peddling hucksters of State and Milk Streets owe 
me full atonement for the foul dishonor they have brought 
upon the city of my birth. 

" Resolved, That, as citizens of Boston and the Commonwealth, 
we record our deep disapprobation and indignant protest against 



58 stjrtJRh^r of sms. 

the surrender of Tliomas Sims by the city, its sanction of the 
cowardly and lying policy of the police, its servile and volunteer 
zeal in behalf of the man-hunters, and its deliberate, wanton, and 
avowed violation of the laws of the Commonwealth, for the 
basest of all purposes, — slave-trading, selling a free man into 
bondage, that State Street and iMilk Street might make money." 

Next we come to that man [John P. Bigelow] who 
stood at yonder door, looking on, while George Thompson 
was mobbed from this platform ; who, neither an honorable 
Mayor nor a gentleman, broke at once his oath of office and 
his promise as a gentleman to give us this hall for certain 
eighty dollars to be paid him, and when he had stood by 
and seen us mobbed out of it, thouglit he mended his 
character by confessing his guilt, in not daring to send m 
a bill ! 

" Resolved^ That the circumstances of the case will not nllow us 
to believe that this infamous deed was the act of the City Gov- 
ernment only ; and then, as Boston-born men, some of us, com- 
forting ourselves in the reflection that the fawning sycophant 
Avho disgraced the I>Iayor'3 chair was not born on the peninsula 
whose fair fame he blotted ; but all the facts go to show, that in 
this, as in all his life, he Avas onlv the easy and shuffling tool of 
the moneyed classes, and therei'ore too insignificant to be remem- 
bered with any higher feeling than contempt. 

" Resolved, That we cherish a deep and stern indignation 
towards the judges of tlie Commonwealth, who, in personal 
cowardice, pitiful subserviency, utter lack of official dignity, and 
entire disregard of their oflficial oaths, witnessed in silence the 
violation of lav/s they were bound to enforce, and disgraced the 
Bench once honored by the presence of a Sedgwick and a 
Sewall." 

I do not forget that the Chm'ch, all the while this 
melancholy scene was* passing, stood by and upheld a 
merciless people m the execution of an inhuman law, 
accepted the barbarity, and baptized it " Christian duty." 



SURRENDER OF SLMS. 59 

O no, I do not forget this ! But I remember that, in an 
enterprising, trading city like ours, tlie merchants are full 
as much, if not more, responsible for the state of public 
opinio;^, than the second-rate men who rather occu})y 
than fill our pulpits, and who certainly seldom tempt the 
brains of their hearers to violate the command of the 
Jewish Scriptures, " Thou shalt not do any work on the 
Sabbath day." 

Do you ask why the Abolitionists denounce the traders 
of Boston ? It is because the merchants chose to send 
back Thomas Sims, — pledged their individual aid to 
Marshal Tukey, in case there should be any resistance ; 
it is because the merchants did it to make money. Thank 
God, they have not made any ! [Great cheering.] Like 
the negro who went to hear Whiteheld, and rolled in the 
dust in the enthusiasm of his religious excitement, until 
they told him it was 7iot Whitefield, when he picked him- 
self up," crying out, " Then I dirty myself for nothing," 
so they dirtied themselves for nothing ! [Tremendous 
cheering.] If only slave-hunting can save them, may 
bankruptcy sit on the ledger of every one of those fifteen 
hundred scoundrels who offered Marshal Tukey their aid ! 
[ Tumul tuoiis applause . ] 

There is one thing to be rejoiced at, — it is this: the 
fact that the police of this city did not dare even to arrest 
a fugitive slave, calling him such. The dogs of Marshal 
Tukey that arrested Thomas Sims in Richmond Street 
had to disguise themselves to do it, — dressed in the 
costume and called themselves watchmen ; and told a lie, 
— that the arrest was for theft, — in order to keep peace 
in the street, while they smuggled him into a carriage. 
Claim, for the honor of Boston, that, when her police 
became man-hunters, they put their badges in their pockets, 
and lied, lest their prey should be torn from their grasp, 
in the first burst of popular indignation. It was the first 



60 SUERE?!!^R OF SIMS. 

time in Boston — I hope it will be tlie last — that the laws 
were obliged to be executed by lying and behind bayonets, 
in the night. So much, though it be ^ery little, may still 
be said for Boston, — that Sims was arrested by lyittg and 
disguised policemen ; he was judged by a Commissioner 
who sat behind bayonets ; and was carried off in the gray 
of the morning, after the moon set, and before the sun 
rose, by a police body armed with swords. She was dis- 
graced, but it was by force ; while, the reverse of the 
Roman rule, eedant anna togce^ the robe gave way to the 
sword. The law was executed ; but it was behind bayo- 
nets. Such laws do not last long. [Loud cheers.] 
Courts that sit behind chams seldom sit more than once. 
[Renewed cheering.] 

[A Voice : " The Whigs defend it."] 

O, I know that Mr. Choate has been here, — I heard 
him, and before a Whig caucus, defend the policy of the 
Fugitive Slave Bill. He told us, while I sat in yonder 
gallery, of the "infamous ethics," — the ''''infamous ethics^ 
that from the Declaration of Independence and the Ser- 
mon on the Mount deduced the duty of immediate eman- 
cipation." The sentiment was received, I am thankful to 
say, with a solemn silence, though Rufus Choate uttered it 
to an assembly of Webster Whigs. I heard it said to-day, 
that the Abolitionists had done nothing, because a fugitive, 
within the last twelve months, had been taken out of 
Boston. They have done a great deal since, sixteen or 
seventeen years ago, Peleg Sprague, standing on this 
platform, pointed to this portrait, [the portrait of Wash- 
ington,] and called him " that slaveholder." It is not 
now considered a merit in Washington that he held 
slaves ; men apologize for it now. I stood in this hall, 
sixteen years ago, when " Abolitionist " was linked with 
epithets of contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all 
the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitoua 



SURKENDER OF SIMS. 61 

diction could tlirow around a bad cause were given it ; 
the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up 
beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, 
if one must die, to die by such a hand, — a hand somewhat 
worthy and able to stifle antislavery,.if it could be stifled. 
The orator was worthy of the gigantic task he attempted ; 
and thousands crowded before him, every one of their 
hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massa- 
chusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty 
years. I came here again last fall, — the first time I had 
been here, in a Whig meeting, since listening to Otis. I 
found Rufus Choate on the platform. Compared with the 
calm grace and dignity of Otis, the thought of which came 
rushing back, he struck me like a monkey in convulsions. 
[Roars of laughter and cheers.] Alas ! I said, if the party 
which has owned Massachusetts so long, which spoke to 
me, as a boy, through the lips of Quincy and Sullivan, of 
Webster and Otis, has sunk down to the miserable sophis- 
try of this mountebank ! — and I felt proud of the city of 
my birth, as I looked over the murmuring multitude be- 
neath me, on whom his spasmodic chatter fell like a wet 
blanket. [Great laughter and cheering.] He did not dare 
to touch a. second time on the Fugitive Slave Bill. He 
tried it once, with his doctrine of " infamous ethics," and 
the men were as silent as the pillars around them. Ah ! 
thought I, we have been here a httle too often ; and if we 
have not impressed the seal of our sentiments very deejily 
on the people, they have at least learned that immediate 
emancipation, though possibly it be a dream, is not " in- 
famous ethics " ; and that such doctrine, the Declaration 
of Independence and tlie Sermon on the Mount, need 
more than the flashy rhetoric of a Webster retainer to 
tear them asunder. [Great cheering.] 

The judges of the Commonwealth, — the judges of the 
Commonwealth, — I 'have something to say of them. I 



62 S^!!ll«DER OF SIMS. 

-vvisli sometimes we lived in England, and I will tell you 
why. Because John Bull has some degree of self-respect 
left. There is an innate, dogged oJjstinacy in him, that 
would never permit the successors of a Hale, a Buller, a 
Mansfield, or a Brougham, to stoop beneath any chain that 
a city constable could put round Westminster Hall. I 
was once a member of the profession myself, but glad I am 
so no longer, since the head of it has bowed his burly per- 
son to Francis Tukey's chain. [Cheers.] Did he not 
know that he was making history that hour, when the 
Chief Justice of tlie Common^^;ealth entered his own 
court, bowing down like a criminal beneath a chain four 
feet from the soil ? Did he not recollect he was the 
author of that decision which sliall be remembered when 
every other case in Pickering's Reports is lost, declaring 
the slave Med a free woman the moment she set foot on 
the soil of Massachusetts, and that he owed more respect 
to himself and his own fame than to disgrace the ermine 
by passing beneatli a chain ? There is something in em- 
blems. There is something, on great occasions, even in 
the attitude of a man. Chief Justice Shaw betrayed the 
bench and the courts of tlie Commonwealth, and the 
honor of a noble profession, when for any pm'pose, still 
more for the purpose of enabling George T. Curtis to act 
his melancholy farce in peace, he crept under a chain into 
his own court-room. And, besides, what a wanton and 
gratuitous insult it was ! What danger was there, with 
two hundred men inside the court-house, and three hun- 
dred men around it on the sidewalk ? Near five hundred 
sworn policemen in and around that building, — what need 
for any chain ? It was put there in wanton insult to the 
feelings of the citizens of Boston, — nothing else ; in wan- 
ton servility to the Slave Power, — nothing else ; in wanton 
flattery to Daniel Webster. Yes, it was the gratuitousness 
of the insult that makes it all the more unbearable ! And 



SURRENDER OF SIMS. 63 

the " old chief," as we loved to call him, made himself, in 
timid servility, party to the insult and the degradation. 
How truly American I Ah, our slave system by no means 
exists only on Soutliern plantations ! 

We are said to be unreasonable in this manner of criti- 
cising the institutions, laws, and men of our country. It 
is thought that, as Jittle men, we are bound to tune our 
voices and bow our heads to the great intellects, as they 
are calle'd, of the land, — Mr. Webster and others. He 
tells us, that there are certain important interests con- 
cerned in this question, which we are bound to regard, 
and not abstract theories about the equality of men, and 
the freedom of humble individuals. Well, all I say to 
that is, when dollars are to be discussed, let him discuss 
them with Franklin Haven, in the directors' room of the 
Merchants' Bank. Let him discuss them over the burstino- 
ledgers of Milk Street, — that is the place for dollar talks. 
But there is no room for dollars in Faneuil Hall. The 
idea of liberty is the great fundamental principle of this 
spot, — that a man is worth more than a bank-vault. 
[Loud cheers.] 

I know Mr. Webster has, on various occasions, intimated 
that this is not statesmanship in the United States ; that 
the cotton-mills of Lowell, the schooners of Cape Cod, the 
coasters of Marblehead, the coal and iron mines of Penn- 
sylvania, and the business of Wall Street are the great 
interests which tins government is framed to protect. He 
inthnated, all through the recent discussion, that property 
is the great element this goverimient is to stand by and 
protect, — the test by which its success is to be appreci- 
ated. Perhaps it is so ; perhaps it is so ; and i^ the mak- 
ing of money, if ten per cent a year, if the placing of one 
dollar on the top of another, be the highest effort of human 
skill ; if the answer to the old Puritan catechism, " What 
is the chief end of man? " is to be changed, as, according 



64 SUrSI^ER of SIMS. 

to mode 111 state craft it ouglit to be, why, be it so. 
Nicholas of Russia made a catecliism for the Poles,, in 
which they are taught that Christ is fiext below God, and 
the Emperor of all the Russias is next below Christ. So, 
judging by the tenor of his recent speeches, Daniel has got 
a new catecliism, " What is the chief end of man ? " The 
old one of the "Westminster divmes, of Selden and Hugh 
Peters, of Cotton and the Mathers, used to answer, " To 
glorify God and enjoy him forever " ; that is Kane-treason, 
now. The " chief end of man " ? — why, it is to save the 
Union ! 

A Voice. — " Three cheers for the Union ! " ' 
Mr. Phillips. — Feeble cheers those ! — [Great ap- 
plause] — and a very thankless office it is to defend the 
Union on that lay. Did you ever read the fable of the 
wolf and the house-dog ? The one was fat, the^other gaunt 
and famine-struck. The wolf said to the dog, " You are 
very fat." " Yes," replied the dog, " I get along very 
well at home." " Well," said the wolf, " could you take 
me home ? " " O, certainly." So they trotted along 
together ; but as they neared the house, the wolf caught 
sight of several ugly scars on the neck of tlia dog, and, 
stopping, cried, " Where did you get those scars on your 
neck? they look very sore and bloody." " O," said the 
dog, " they tie me up at night, and I have rather an incon- 
venient iron collar on my neck. But that 's a small matter ; 
they feed me well." " On the whole," said the wolf, " tak- 
ing the food and the collar together, I prefer to remain in 
the woods." Now, if I am allowed to choose, I do not 
like the collar of Daniel Webster and Parson Dewey, and 
there are certain ugly scars I see about their necks. I 
should not like. Dr. Dewey, to promise to retm-n my 
mother to slavery ; and, Mr. Webster, I prefer to be 
lean and keep my " prejudices," to getting fat by smoth- 
ering them. I do not like your idea of the Yankee char- 



SURRENDER OF SIMS. 65 

acter, which seems to be too near that of the Scotchman, 
of whom Dr. Johnson said, that, if he saw a dollar on the 
other side of hell, he would make a spring for it at the 
risk of falhng in. [Laughter.] Under correction of these 
great statesmen and divines, I cannot think this the heau 
ideal of human perfection. I do not care whether the 
schooners of Harwich, under slaveholding bunting, catch 
fish and keep them or not ; I do not care whether the 
mills of Abbott Lawrence make him worth two millions or 
one, Avhether the iron and coal mines of Pennsylvania are 
profitable or not, if, in order to have them profitable, we 
must go down on our marrow-bones and thank Daniel 
Webster for sa\'ing his Union, call Mayor Bigelow an 
honorable man and Mayor, and acknowledge Francis 
Tukey as Chief Justice of the Commonwealth. I prefer 
hunger and the woods to the hopeless task of maintaining 
the sincerity of Daniel Webster, or bending under the 
chain of Francis Tukey. [Tremendous cheering.] 

Sir, I have something to say of this old Commonwealth. 
I went up one day into the Senate-chamber of Massachu- 
setts, in which the Otises, the Quincys, and the Adamses, 
Parsons and Sedgwick, Sewall and Strong, have sat and 
spoke in times gone by, — in which the noblest legislation 
in the world, on many great points of human concern, has 
made her the noblest State in the world, — the good old 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, — and I stood there to 
see this impudent City Marshal tell the Senate of Massa- 
chusetts that he knew l^was trampling on the laws of 
the Commonwealth, and that he intended to do so, as 
Mayors told him to ! And there was not spirit enough 
in the Free Soil party, — no, nor in the Democratic 
party, — there was not self-respect enough in the very 
Senators who were sworn to maintain these laws, to de- 
fend them against this insolent boast of a city constable. 
Now, fellow-citizens, you may, and probably do, think 



QQ SURT?illDER OF SIMS. 

me a fanatic ; till you judge men and things on different 
principles, I do not care much what you think me ; I 
have outgrown that interesting anxiety : but I toll you 
this, if I see the Commonwealth upside down, I mean 
to keep my neck free enough from collars to say so ; and 
I think it is upside down when a city constable dictates 
law in the Senate-chamber of Massachusetts. [Ion I 
cheers.] 

Mr. President, let me add one thing more. For Francis 
Tukey I have no epithet of contempt or of indignation. 
He may, and does, for aught I know, perform his duties 
as City Marshal efficiently and well. I know he would, 
had he been present, have done his duty, and his deputy 
stood ready to do it that niglit in George Thompson's 
presence, if we had really had a Mayor, and not a lackey 
in the Mayor's chair. [Great laughter and cheering.] I 
find little fault, comparatively, with the City Marshal of 
Boston, that he did the infimous duty which the merchants 
of Boston set him. The fault that I rather choose to note 
is, that the owner of the brig Acorn can walk up State 
Street, and be as honored a man as he was before ; that 
John H. Pearson walks our streets as erect as ever, and 
no merchant slu'inks from his side. But Ave will put the 
fact that he owned that brig, and the infamous uses he 
made of it, so blackly on record, that his children — yes, 
HIS CHILDREN — will gladly, twenty years hence, forego 
all the wealth he will leave them to blot out that single 
record. [Enthusiastic applause.] The time shall come 
when it will be thouo-ht the unkindest thino- in the world 
for any one to remind the son of that man that his father's 
name was John H. Pearson, and that he owned the Acorn. 
[Renewed cheering.] 

[At this point a voice called out, " Three cheers for John H. Pear- 
son." After what had been said from the platform, such a call waa 
not likely to be very warmly responded to ; but one or two voices 
were raised, and Mr. Phillips continued.] 



SURRENDER OF SIMS. 67 

Yes, it Is fitting that tlie cheer should be a poor one, 
when, in the presence of that merchant [pointing to the 
portrait of John Hancock], of that merchant who led the 
noblest movement for civil liberty ever made on this side 
the ocean, — when In his presence you attempt to cheer 
this miserable carrier of slaves, who calls himself, and alas ! 
according to the present average of State Street, has a 
right to call himself, a Boston merchant. 

I want to remark one other change, since we were shut 
out of Faneuil Hall. It is this. Within a few months, I 
stood ir. this hall, when Charles Francis Adams was on 
the platform ; — a noble representative, a worthy son, let 
me say in passing, of the two Adamses who hung here 
above him. While here he had occasion to mention the 
name of Daniel Webster, as I have once or twice to-night, 
and it was received with cheer on cheer, four, five, and 
six times repeated during the course of his speech. In fact, 
he could hardly go on for the noisy opposition. That was 
at a time when some men were crazy enough to think that 
Daniel would yet be nominated for the Presidency ; but 
those gaudy soap-bubbles have all burst. [" Three cheers 
for Daniel Webster."] Yes, three cheers for Sir Pertinax 
M'Sycophant, who all his life long has been bowing down 
to the Slave Power to secure the Presidency ; willing to 
sacrifice his manhood for the promise of a mess of pottage, 
and destined to be outwitted at last. [Cheers.] Three 
cheers for the man who, after " many great and swelling 
words " against Texas, when finally the question of the 
Mexican war was before the Senate, did not dare to vote, 
but dodged the question, afraid to be wholly Southerner 
or Northerner, and striving in vain to outdo Winthrop in 
facing both ways. [Cheers.] Three cheers for the man 
who went Into Virginia, and, under an " October sun " of 
the Oil Dominion, plc^^ed himself — the recreant New- 
Englander ! — to silence on the slave question ; a pledge 



68 SURR^^teR OF SIMS. 

infamoTis enough in itself, but whose infamy was doubled 
when he broke it only to speak against the slave on the 
7th of March, 1850. Three cheers for* him ! [They were 
given, but so faintly, that a shout of derision went up from 
the whole audience.] Three cheers for the statesman who 
said on the steps of the Revere House tliat " this agitation 
must be put down," and the agitationists have entered 
Faneuil Hall before him. [Great applause.] Three 
cheers for the man who could aflPord no better name to 
the Abolitionists than " rub-a-dub agitators," till Kossuth 
found no method but theirs to chain the millions to him- 
self; and then this far-sighted statesman discovered that 
" there were people inclined to underrate the influence of 
public opinion." [Laughter.] Three cheers for the man 
who gave the State a new motive to send Horace Mann 
back to Washington, lest we should be thought guilty 
abroad of shocking bad taste in the old imperial tongue 
of the Romans. [Laughter.] Three cheers for the man — 
(X), I like to repeat the Book of Daniel !) — three cheers 
for " the Whig, the Massachusetts Whig, the Faneuil 
Hall Whig," who came home to Massachusetts, — his own 
Massachusetts, the State he thought he owned, body and 
soul, — who came home to Massachusetts, and lobbied so 
efficiently as to secure the election of Charles Sumner to 
the Senate of the United States. [Loud cheers.] 

[A voice : " Three cheers for Charles Sumner." Overwhelming 
applause. " Three cheers for Webster." Mr. Phillips continued : — ] 

Faintly given, those last; but I do not much care, 
Mr. Chairman, which way the balance of cheers goes in 
respect to the gentleman whose name has just been 
mentioned [Mr. Webster]. It is said, you know, that 
when Washington stood before the surrendering army 
of Cornwallis, some of the American troops, as Corn- 
wallis came forward to surrender his sword, began, in very 
bad taste, to cheer. The noble Virginian turned to them 



SURRENDER OF SIMS. 69 

and said, " Let posterity clieer for us " ; and tliey were 
silent. Now, if Daniel Webster has done anything on 
the subject of slavery which posterity will not have the 
kindness to forget, may he get cheers for it, fifty years 
hence, and in this hall ; using my Yankee privilege, how- 
ever, "I rather guess" some future D'Israeli will be able 
to put that down in continuation of his grandfather's 
chapter of " events tha' never took place." I much, I 
very much doubt, whether, fifty years hence, Massachu- 
setts will not choose men with back-bones to send to Wash- 
ington ; not men who go there to yield up to the great 
temptations, social and political, of the capital, the interests 
and the honor of Massachusetts and New Eno-land. I be- 
lieve, no matter whether the Abolitionists have done much 
or little, that the average of political independence has 
risen within the last ten or fifteen years. I know that 
strange sounds have been heard from the House of Rep- 
resentatives and the Senate within the last ten or fifteen 
years : that the old tone so often breathed there of North- 
ern submission has very much changed since John Quincy 
Adams vindicated free speech on the floor of that House. 
I read just now a speech worthy, in some respects, of 
Faneuil Hall, from the lips of Robert Rantoul, in rebuke 
of a recreant Abolitionist from the banks of the Connecti- 
cut (George T. Davis). I know not what may be the 
future course of Mr. Rantoul on this question ; I know 
not how erect he may stand hereafter ; but I am willing 
to give him good credit in the future, so well paid has 
been this his first bill of exchange. [Great cheering.] 
He has done, at least, his duty to the constituency he 
represented. He looked North for his instructions. The 
time has been when no Massachusetts representative 
looked North ; we saw only their backs. They have 
always looked to the Southern Cross ; they never turned 
their eyes to the North Star. They never looked back to 



70 SUR5^iM:R OF SIMS. 

the Massachusetts that sent them. Charles Allen and 
Horace Mann, no matter how far they may he from the 
level of what we call antislavery, show us at least this 
cheering sign. While speaking, they have turned their 
faces toward Massachusetts. They reflect the public opin- 
ion of the State they represent. They look to Faneuil 
Hall, not to '' the October sun of the Old Dominion." 
Now, Mr. Chairman, if we can come to this hall, year 
after year ; if we can hold these meetings ; if we can 
sustain any amount of ridicule for the sake of antislavery ; 
if we can fill yonder State-House with legislative action 
that shall vindicate the old fame of the State ; if we can 
fill every town-house and school-house in the State with 
antislavery agitation, — then the eyes of every caucus and 
every political meeting, and of Congress, will all turn 
North, and, God willing, they shall see a North worth 
looking at. We will have better evidence than the some- 
what apocryphal assurance of Mr. Webster, at Marsh- 
field, in '48, that the North Star is at last discovered. 
There will not only be a shrine, but worshippers. 
[Cheers.] 

I have not the voice to detain this meeting any longer. 
I am rejoiced to find myself again in Faneuil Hall. I am 
glad it has so happened that the very first meeting of the 
Massachusetts Antislavery Society since April 12th, 1851, 
has been within these walls, and that the first note of their 
rebuke of the city government, and of the Milk Street 
interest whose servant it stooped to be, has been from the 
platform of Faneuil Hall. [Applause.] 



SIMS ANNIVERSAEY.* 



M 



R. CHAIRMAN: There is a resolution on yonr 
table to this effect : — 



^^ Resolved^ Therefore^ That we advise all colored persons, 
liable to these arrests, to leave the United States, unless they 
are fully resolved to take the life of any officer who shall attempt, 
under any pretext, to seize them ; and we urge the formation in 
every town of vigilance committees, prepared to secure to every 
person claimed as a slave the fullest trial possible, and to avail 
themselves fearlessly, according to their best judgment, of all the 
means God and Nature have put into their hands, to see that 
substantial justice be done." 

To this Mr. Garrison moves as an amendment the 
following : — 

" Resolved, That if ' resistance to tyrants,' by bloody weapons, 
' is obedience to God,' and if our Revolutionary fathers were justi- 
fied in wading through blood to freedom and independence, then 
every fugitive slave is justified in arming himself for protection 
and defence, — in taking the life of every marshal, commissioner, 
or other person who attempts to reduce him to bondage ; and the 
millions who are clanking their chains on our soil find ample 
warrant in rising en masse, and asserting their right to liberty, at 
whatever sacrifice of the life of their oppressors. 

" Resolved, That the State in which no fugitive slave can 
remain in safety, and from which he must flee in order to secure 

* Speech at the Melodeon, on the Eirst Anniversary of the Kendition of 
Thomas Sims, April 12, 1852. 



72 SIM^HJNIVERSARY. 

his liberty in another hxnd, is to be held responsible for all the 
crimes and horrors which cluster about the slave-system and the 
slave-trade, — and that State is the Comjnonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts." 

I incline to the first form, rather than to that suggested 
by my friend, though such is my conviction of the sound- 
ness of his judgment and his rare insight into all the bear- 
ings of our cause, that I distrust my own dehberate judg- 
ment, when it leads me to a different conclusion from his. 

I am, however, strongly impressed with the conviction, 
that the friends of the cause and the fugitives among us 
need some advice ; and that we cannot make a better use 
of this occasion than to discuss what that advice shall be. 
Mr. Garrison's amendment seems to me too ambiguous ; 
it contents itself with announcing an important principle, 
but suggests nothing, and advises nothing. 

Why, Mr. Chairman, do we assemble here on such a 
melancholy occasion as the present ? This, instead of last 
Thursday, should be our Fast Day, if there were any 
reason for us to fast at all, — for on this day, twelve 
months ago, the Abolitionists of the Commonwealth suf- 
fered a great, a melancholy defeat. On that day, unex- 
pectedly to many, a man was carried back to slavery from 
the capital of the State. It was an event which surprised 
some of our fellow-citizens, and all the rest of New Eng- 
land, which relied too fondly on the reputation Massachu- 
setts had won as an antislavery community. Either the 
flavor of our old religion, or some remnant of the spirit of 
1649 and 1776, had made the city of the Puritans a house 
of refuge to the fugitive. They had gathered here, and 
in our neighborhood, by hundreds. There are traditions 
of attempts to seize one now and then, — sometimes of 
trials in open court ; and it is possible that, in the general 
indiiference, a few may have been carried back quietly by 
some underling official, though we have no certain knowl- 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY". 73 

edge of any case where the victim was not finally saved. 
Thomas Sims is the first man that the city of Boston ever 
openly bound and fettered, and sent back to bondage. I 
have no heart to dwell on so horrible an outrage : — that 
sad procession, in the dim morning, through our streets, — 
the poor youth, — his noble effort to break his chains, — 
mocked with one short hour of freedom, and then thrust 
back to the hell he had escaped, by brother men, in the 
prostituted names of justice and religion. We sit down 
with the single captive, and weep with him as the iron 
enters into his soul, — too sad to think, for the moment, 
of the disgrace of our city, or even the wickedness of its 
rulers. Pity swallows up indignation. We might be for- 
given if for the moment we mistook our sadness for despair, 
and even fancied the event disastrous to others than the 
victim. But not so. Liberty knows nothing but victories. 
In a cause like ours, to which every attribute of the Most 
High is pledged, " everything helps us." Selfish com- 
merce, huckstering politics, and the mocking priest, might 
turn from such a scene and congratulate each other, say- 
ing, "Our mountain stands strong"; but we knew that 
emotions were stronger than statutes, more lasting than 
ledgers, and not to be frozen down even by creeds, and 
that all New England would erelong gather itself to 
answer the last sad question of this hapless victim, as he 
stepped on the piratical deck of the Acorn, ^ " Is this 
Massachusetts liberty?" 

What, then, is the use of such a celebration as this ? It 
seems to me the only possible use that could, in any cir- 
cumstances, be made of such an occasion, would be to record 
our protest against the deed, with an indignant rebuke of 
its perpetrators, and to direct our eyes forward to see what 
we can now do for men in like jeopardy with Sims. Our 
protest and our rebuke have been already uttered. It is 
needless to repeat them. The individuals who so infa- 



74 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

mously misused their little brief authority have, some of 
them, faded from the public eye, — raelted back into the 
mass of their fellow-slaves. Their names are not worth 
recalling, for they are not of mark enough to point a moral. 
Let them pass, all of them ; — the judge who stood head 
and shoulders above the rest in brutal bearino; and the arts 
of a demagogue ; the commissioner, whom the atmosphere 
of noble enthusiasm about him never betrayed, during all 
that eventful week, into even the semblance of an honora- 
ble emotion ; the counsellor who pledged a word, till then 
undoubted, to that lie for which no guaranty but his could 
have Avon even a momentary credence, and the belief of 
which snapped the last tiny thread of hope that bound 
the hapless victim to the altar of Massachusetts criminal 
law. 

Yes, let them pass. The few whom charity may hope 
sinned, unable to " discern between their right hand and 
their left hand," and the many who did just right enough 
to prove they knew their duty, but wallowed in the wrong 
so greedily as to show how much they loved it. Let His- 
tory close the record. Let her allow that " on the side of 
the oppressor there was power," — power " to frame mis- 
chief by a law " ; that on that side were all the forms of 
law, and behind those forms, most of the elements of con- 
trol : wealth, greedy of increase, and anxious for order, at 
any sacrifice of principle, — priests prophesying smooth 
things, and arrogating to themselves the name of Chris- 
tianity, — ambition, baptizing itself statesmanship, — and 
that unthinking patriotism, child of habit and not of rea- 
son, which mistakes government for liberty and law 
for justice. And, on the other hand, let her allow that, 
though the Abolitionists were heedful of the hour, and 
fearless against the prelates of the Church, 

" to plead her cause, 
And from our judges \dndicate the laws," — 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 75 

wliile they " did not spare the tyrant one hard word," — 
they were strictly law-abiding citizens. While judges 
and executives deserted their posts, the Abolitionists vio 
lated no law. They begged for nothing but the law, — 
they wearied themselves to obtain the simple legal rights 
guaranteed to them and to all by the State. The city 
government, in direct defiance of the statute of 1843, 
aided, both directly and indirectly, in the arrest and deten- 
tion of a person claimed as a slave. To effect this purpose, 
they violated the commonest rights of the citizens, — shut 
them out of their own court-house, — subjected them from 
day to day to needless, illegal, and vexatious arrests. 
Judges were "Artful Dodgers," and sheriffs refused all 
processes. The Abolitionists exhausted every device, be- 
sieged every tribunal, implored the interference of every 
department, to obtain the bare execution of the law of the 
Commonwealth. And let History say beside, that mean- 
time they fearlessly declared that resistance would be 
better than submission ; while not so absurd as to throw 
one man, or a score of men, against a government in arms, 
they proclaimed that they would have been glad to see the 
people rise against the law, — that nothing which a hand- 
ful of men could do for such an end was wanting, — that 
they denounced the church sanctioning the deed as " a 
synagogue of Satan," and the law, whether constitutional 
or not, as mere tyranny and wickedness, its executioners 
worse than murderers, — that, knowing the value of a true 
law and real order, they said and believed, that rather 
than one man should be sent back to slavery, better, far 
better, human laws should be trampled under foot, and the 
order of society broken every day. 

When the pulpit preached slave -hunting, and the law 
bound the victim, and society said, " Amen ! this will make 
money," we were "fanatics," — "enthusiasts," — "sedi- 
tious, — " disorganizers," — " scorners of the pulpit," -^ 



76 STM^^NIVERSARY. 

" traitors." Genius of the Past ! drop not from tliy tablets 
one of these honorable names. We claim them all as our 
surest title-deeds to the memory and ^'atitude of mankind. 
We indeed thought man more than constitutions, humanity 
and justice of more worth than law. Seal up the record ! 
If Boston is proud of her part, let her rest assured we are 
not ashamed of ours ! 

All this has been said so often, that it is useless to dwell 
on it now. The best use that we can now make of this 
occasion, it seems to me, is to look about us, take our 
bearings, and tell the fugitives, over whom yet hangs this 
terrible statute, what course, in our opinion, tliey should 
pursue. 

And, in the first place, it Is neither frank nor honest to 
keep up the delusive idea that a fugitive slave can be pro- 
tected in Massachusetts. I hope I am mistaken ; I shall 
be glad to be proved incorrect ; but I do not believe there 
is any such antislavery sentiment here as is able to protect 
a fumtive on whom the £;overnment has once laid its hand. 
We were told this afternoon, from this platform, that there 
were one hundred and fifty men In one town ready to 
come with their muskets to Boston, — all they waited for 
was an Invitation. I heard, three weeks before the Sims 
case, that there were a hundred in one town In Plymouth 
County pledged to shoulder their muskets In such a cause. 
We saw nothing of them. I heard, three weeks after the 
Sims rendition, that there were two hundred more in the 
city of Worcester ready to have come, had they been 
invited. We saw nothing of them. On such an occasion, 
from the nature of the case, there cannot be much previous 
concert ; the people must take their own cause into their 
own hands. Intense earnestness of purpose, pervading 
large classes, must Instinctively perceive the crisis, and 
gather all spontaneously for the first act which is to organ- 
ize revolution. When the Court was in pursuit of John 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 77 

Hampden, we are not told that the two thousand men who 
rode up to London the next morning, to stand between 
their representative and a king's frown, waited for an 
invitation. They assembled of their own voluntary and 
individual purpose, and found themselves in London. 
Whenever there is a like determination throughout Mas- 
sachusetts, it will need no invitation. When, in 1775, 
the British turned their eyes toward Lexington, the same 
invitation went out from the Vigilance Committee of Me- 
chanics in Boston, as in our case of April, 1851. Two 
lanterns on the North Church steeple telegraphed the fact 
to the country ; Revere and Prescott, as they rode from 
house to house in tlie gray light of that April morning, 
could tell little what others would do, — they flung into 
each house the startling announcement, " The red-coats 
are coming ! " and rode on. None that day issued orders, 
none obeyed aught but his own soul. Though Massachu- 
setts rocked from Barnstable to Berkshire, when the wire 
flashed over the land the announcement that a slave lay 
chained in the Boston court-house, there was no answer 
from the antislavery feeling of the State. It is sad, there- 
fore, but it seems to me honest, to say to the fugitive in 
Boston, or on his way, that, if the government once seize 
him, he cannot be protected here. I think we are bound, 
in common kindness and honesty, to tell them that there 
are but two ways that promise any refuge from the hor- 
rors of a return to bondage : one is to fly, — to place 
themselves under the protection of that government, 
which, with all her faults, has won the proud distinction 
that slaves cannot breathe her air, — the fast-anchored isle 
of empire, where tyrants and slaves may alike find refuge 
from vengeance and oppression. And this is the course 

I WOULD ADVISE EVERY MAN TO ADOPT. ThIS, UNLESS 
THERE ARE, IN HIS PARTICULAR CASE, IMPERATIVE REASONS 

TO THE CONTRARY, IS HIS DUTY. If this course be impos- 



MS aWv 



78 SIMS AOTTTVERSARY. 

sible, then the other way is to arm himself, and by resist- 
ance secure in the Free States a trial for homicide, — trust- 
ing that no jury will be able so far to crush the instincts 
of humanity as not to hold him justified. 

But some one may ask, Why countenance, even by a 
mention of it, this public resistance, — you, whose whole 
enterprise repudiates force ? Because this is a very 
different question from that great issue, the abolition of 
slavery. On that point, I am Avilling to wait. I can be 
patient, no matter how often that is defeated by treach- 
erous statesmen. The cause of three millions of slaves, 
the destruction of a great national institution, must pro- 
ceed slowly ; and, like every other change in public senti- 
ment, we must wait patiently for it, and there the best 
policy is, beyond all question, the policy of submission ; for 
that gains, in time, on public sympathy. But this is a 
different case. Who can ask the trembling, anxious fugi- 
tive to stop and submit patiently to the overwhelming 
chances of going back, that his fate may, in some indirect 
manner, and far-off hour, influence for good the destiny 
of his fellow-millions ? Such virtue must be self-moved. 
Who could stand and ask it of another ? True, Thomas 
Sims returned is a great public event, calculated to make 
Abolitionists ; but the game sickens me when the counters 
are living men. We have no right to use up fugitives 
for the manufacture of antislaA^ery sentiment. There are 
those who hang one man to benefit another, and to create 
a wholesome dread of crime. I shrink from using human 
life as raw material for the production of any state of pub- 
lic opinion, however valuable. I do not think we have a 
right to use up fugitive slaves in this pitiless way, in order 
to extend or deepen an antislavery sentiment. At least, I 
have no right to use them so, without theii full consent. 
It seems to me, therefore, we are bound to tell those 
who have taken refuge under the laws of Massachusetts, 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 79 

wliat they must expect here. The time was when we 
honestly believed they might expect protection. That 
time, in my opinion, has passed by. I do not certainly 
know that there will be any taken this year or next. I 
do not know when they may choose again to take another 
man from Boston. But I do know, that just so soon as 
any other miscreant Webster [hisses and cheers] shall 
thhik it necessary to lay another fugitive slave on the altar 
of his Presidential chances, just so soon will another be 
taken from the streets of Boston. I note those hisses. 
Do not understand me that Mr. Webster himself will ever 
find it worth while again to ask this act of vassal service 
from his retainers. O no ! wait a few months, and his 
fate will be that of Buckingham : — 

" wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
He left not faction, but of that was left." 

But even though he die or be shelved, the race of traitors 
will not be extinct ; and it is a sickening dread for these 
two or three hundred men and women to live with this 
law, worse than the sword of Damocles, hanging over 
their heads. I believe the Abolitionists of the country 
owe it to their brethren to tell them what policy should 
rule their conduct in the present crisis. To be sure, you 
may ask them to stay, and, when they are taken, to sub- 
mit, and let the fact appeal to the sympathies of the coun- 
try, which will result in kindling public indignation ; and 
if they choose, from deep religions convictions, to make 
themselves thus the food of antislavery growth, God bless 
them for the heroic self-sacrifice which dictates such a 
course. But I cannot ask of a poor, friendless, broken- 
hearted fellow-creature such a momentous sacrifice. I do 
say, in private, to every one that comes to me, " But one 
course is left for you. There is no safety for you here ; 
there is no law for you here. The hearts of the judges 
are stone , the hearts of the people are stone. It is in 



80 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

vain that you appeal to the Abolitionists. Thej may be 
ready, may be able, ten years hence.',' But the "brace 
of Adamses," to which our friend [Theodore Parker] 
alluded this morning, if they had mistaken 1765 for 1775, 
would have ended at the scaflPold instead of the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the treaty of 1783. We must 
bide our time, and we must read, with anointed eyes, the 
signs of our time. If public opinion is wrong, we want to 
know it ; know it, that we may remodel it. We will our- 
selves trample this accm'sed Fugitive Slave Law under 
foot. [Great cheering.] But we are a minority at pres- 
ent, and cannot do this to any great practical effect ; we 
are bound to sucrcrest to these unfortunates who look to us 
for advice, some feasible plan. This, in my view, should 
be our counsel: "Depart if you can, — if you have 
time and means. As no one has a right to ask that you 
stay, and, if arrested, submit, in order that your case may 
convert men to antislavery principles ; so you have no 
right, capriciously, to stay and resist, merely that your 
resistance may rouse attention, and awaken antislavery 
sympathy. It is a grave thing to break into the bloody 
house of life. The mere expectation of good conse- 
quences will not justify you in taking a man's life. You 
have a perfect right to live where you choose. No one 
can rightfully force you away. There may be important 
and sufficient reasons, in many cases, why you should stay 
and vindicate your right at all hazards. But in common 
cases, where no such reasons exist, it is better that you sur- 
render your extreme right to live where you choose, than 
assert it in blood, and thus risk injuring the movement 
which seeks to aid your fellows. Put yourselves mider 
the protection of the British flag ; appeal to the humanity 
of the world. Do not linger here." Does any friend of 
the cause exclaim, " You take away the great means of 
antislavery agitation ! The sight of a slave carried back to 



SIMS ANNIVERSARl. «1 

bondage is the most eloquent appeal the antlslaveiy cause 
can make to the sympathies of the public." I know it ! 
but the gain is all too dear when it is bought by the sacri- 
fice of one man, thrust back to the hell of American bond- 
age. Still, circumstances may prevent flight, imperative 
reasons may exist why he should remain here : he may be 
seized before he succeeds in escaping. I say to him, then, 
There is a course left, if you have the courage to face it. 
There is one appeal left, which has not yet been tried ; it 
may avail you ; I cannot insure you even that. It has 
now reached that pass when even the chance of a Boston 
gibbet may be no protection from a Georgia plantation ; 
but if I were in your place, I would try ! [Tremendous 
cheering.] The sympathies of the people will gather 
round you, if put on trial for sucli an act. The mortal 
hatred which would set the hounds of the law, thirsty 
for our blood, on keener scent, if we stood charged Avith 
legal offences, would not reach you. I do not know that 
the state-prison would be any refuge from the jail at 
Savannah or Charleston ; but there may be something 
in an appeal to a Massachusetts jury impanelled to try a 
man's inalienable right to liberty, the pursuit of happi- 
ness, and to protect himself ; and I hope — I dare not 
hope much, but I do hope — that there is still humanity 
enough to bring you in " not guilty." There is anotlier 
point. I really believe if a jury of Boston merchants 
should steel themselves to a verdict of guilty, that a Gov- 
ernor sitting in the seat of Samuel Adams or Henry Vane 
would never dare to sign the warrant, until he had secured 
a passage on board a Cunard steamer. I think, therefore, 
that it is possible an appeal to the criminal jurisdiction of 
the State might save a man. Perhaps it might be just 
that final blow which would stun this drunken nation into 
sobriety, and make it heed, at last, the claims of the slave. 
Mark me ! I do not advise any one to take the life of 



82 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

his fellow, — to brave the vengeance of the law, and run 
the somewhat, after all, unequal risk x>f the hard tech- 
nical heart of a Massachusetts jury. Such an act must be, 
after all, one's own impulse. To burst away from all 
civil relations, to throw one's self back on this great primal 
right of self-protection, at all hazards, must be the growth 
of one's own thought and purpose. I can only tell the 
sufferer the possibilities that lie before him, — tell him 
what I would do in his case, — tell him that what 1 would 
do myself I would countenance another in doing, and aid 
him to the extent of my power. 

The antisla\'ery cause is a wonder to many. They 
wonder that it does not succeed faster. We see William 
Cobbett, with his Political Register, circulating seventy 
thousand copies per week, appeal to the workingmen of 
Great Britain, and in a few years he carries his measures 
over the head of Parliament. Cobden talks the farmers of 
England, in less than ten years, out of a tyranny that had 
endured for generations. The difference is, we have no such 
selfish motives to appeal to. We appeal to white men, 
who cannot see any present interest they have in the 
slave question. It is impossible to stir them. They must 
ascend to a level of disinterestedness which tlie masses 
seldom reach, before we can create any excitement in 
them on the question of slavery. I do not know when 
that point will be gained. If we shall ever be able to 
reach, through the press, the millions of non-slaveholding 
white men in the Southern States, I think we shall have 
a parallel then to the course of EngHsh agitation ; for we 
can then appeal to the selfish interest of white men, able 
to vote, to speak, and to act on this subject. But at 
present we have to make men interested, indignant, en- 
thusiastic for others, not for themselves. The slave ques- 
tion halts and lingers, because it cannot get the selfishness 
of men on its side ; and that, after all, has been the lever 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 8-^ 

by which the greatest political questions have been car- 
ried. 

There is one other motive ; that is, fear. Cobbett and 
his fellows gathered the people of Great Britain in public 
meetino;s of two hundred thousand men ; and thouoh the 
Duke of Wellington ordered his Scotch Greys to rougli- 
grind their swords, as at Waterloo, he feared to order 
them drawn in the fxce of two hundred thousand English- 
men. That 2;atherino: was for their own rio;hts. Cross the 
Channel, and you come to the Irish question. How was 
that dealt with ? By fear. When Ireland got no sym- 
pathy from the English people, she so ordered her aflPairs 
tliat the dread of anarchy, anchored so close to Liverpool 
and Bristol, forced the government to treat the question, 
and they treated it by submission. 

Now, I read my lesson in the light of this historical 
experience. I cannot yet move the selfishness of the 
white man to help me. On this question I cannot get it 
on my side. It is just possible that tlie fugitive slave, 
taking his defence into his own riglit hand, and appealing 
to the first principle of natural law, may so excite the 
sympathy of some and the fears of others, as to gain the 
attention of all, and force them to grapple with this problem 
of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. The time may come 
when Massachusetts m.ay not be willing to have her cities 
scenes of bloodshed, in order that one over-ambitious man 
may gain his point, and smooth his path to the Presidency ; 
or that a human beino; should be hurried into bondao;e, 
that rich men may add field to field and house to house. 

I have striven to present this point as slowly, as fully, 
as deliberately as possible, becawse I know it is an impor- 
tant one. It is, in some sense, the launching of a new 
measure in the antislavery enterprise, to countenance the 
fugitive, who has tried in vain every avenue of escape, in 
standing even at last at bay, and protecting himself. B ut 



84 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

I know of no pledge of the antislaveiy cause against it. 
Our enterprise is pledged to nothing l3ut the abolition of 
slavery. When we set out, we said we would do our 
work under the government and under the Church. We 
tried it. We found that we could not work in either 
way ; we found it necessary to denounce the Church 
and withdraw from the government. We did what we 
could to work through both. We saw that it was expe- 
dient to work throuo-h them both, if we could. Findinor 
it impossible, we let experience dictate our measures. 
We came out. Consistency — consistency bade us come 
out. Consistency, — we cannot always sail due east, 
though our destination be Europe. It is no violation of 
consistency, therefore, (if that were of any consequence,) 
for us to adopt a measure like this, though it was not at 
first contemplated. 

I go further. I do not believe that, if we should live to 
the longest period Providence ever allots to the life of a 
human being, we shall see the total abolition of slavery, 
unless it comes in some critical conjuncture of national 
affairs, when the slave, taking advantage of a crisis in the 
fate of his masters, shall dictate his own terms. How did 
French slavery go down ? How did the French slave- 
trade go down ? When Napoleon came back from Elba, 
when his fate hung trembling in the balance, and he 
wished to gather around him the sympathies of the liberals 
of Europe, he no sooner set foot in the Tuileries than he 
signed the edict abolishino; the slave-trade, against which 
the Abolitionists of England and France had protested for 
twent}^ years in vain. And the trade went down, because 
Napoleon felt that he mast do something to gild the dark- 
ening hour of his second attempt to clutch the sceptre of 
France. How did the slave system go down ? When, in 
1848, the Provisional Government found itself in the H6- 
tel de Ville, obliged to do something to draw to itself 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 85 

the sympathy and liberal feeling of the Fi'encli nation, 
they signed an edict — it was the first from the nascent 
Republic — abolishing the death-penalty and slavery. 
The storm which rocked the vessel of state almost to 
fomidering, snapped forever the chain of the French slave. 
Look, too, at the history of Mexican and South American 
emancipation ; you will find that it was, in every instance, 
I think, the child of convulsion. 

The hour will come — God hasten it ! — when the 
American people shall so stand on the deck of their Union, 
" built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark." If I 
live to see that hour, I shall say to every slave. Strike 
now for Freedom ! [Long-continued and deafening 
cheers.] The balance hangs trembling ; it is uncertain 
which scale shall kick the beam. Strain every nerve, 
wrestle with every power God and nature have put into 
your hands, for your place among the races of this Western 
world " ; and that hour will free the slave. The Aboli- 
tionist who shall stand in such an hour as that, and keep 
silence, will be recreant to the cause of three million 
of his fe)low-men in bonds. I believe that probably is 
the only way in which w^e shall ever, any of us, see the 
downfall of American slavery. I do not shrink from the 
toast with which Dr. Johnson flavored his Oxford Port, — 
" Success to the first insurrection of the blacks in Ja- 
maica ! " I do not shrink from the sentiment of Southey, 
in a letter to Duppa, — "There are scenes of tremendous 
horror which I could smile at by Mercy's side. An insur- 
rection which should make the negroes masters of the 
West Lidies is one." I believe both these sentiments are 
dictated by the highest humanity. I know Avhat anarchy 
is. I know what civil war is. I can imagine the scenes 
of blood through which a rebellious slave-population must 
march to their rights. They are dreadful. And yet, I 
do not know that, to an enlightened mind, a scene of civil 



8f) SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

war is any more sickening than the thonght of a hundred 
and fifty years of slavery. Take the troken hearts, the 
bereaved mothers, the infant wrung from the hands of 
its parents, the husband and wife torn asunder, every 
right trodden under foot, the bhghted hopes, the imbruted 
souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below 
the level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded 
with beasts, who have walked over the burning marl of 
Southern slavery to their graves, and where is the battle- 
field, however ghastly, that is not white — white as an 
angel's wing — compared with the blackness of that dark- 
ness which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred 
years ? [Great sensation.] Do you love mercy ? Weigh 
out the fifty thousand hearts that have beaten their last 
pulse amid agonies of thought and suflPering fancy faints to 
think of, and the fifty thousand mothers who, with sicken- 
ing senses, watch for footsteps that are not wont to tarry 
lono; in their comino;, and soon find themselves left to tread 
the pathway of life alone, — add all the horrors of cities 
sacked and lands laid waste, — that is war, — weigh it 
now against some young, trembling girl sent to the auction- 
block, some man like that taken from our court-house and 
carried back into Georgia ; multiply this individual agony 
into three millions ; multiply that into centuries ; and that 
into all the relations of father and child, husband and 
wife ; heap on all the deep moral degradation both of the 
oppressor and the oppressed, — and tell me if Waterloo or 
Thermopylae can claim one tear from the eye even of the 
tenderest spirit of mercy, compared with this daily system 
of hell amid the most civilized and Christian people on 
the face of the earth ! 

No, I confess I am not a non-resistant. The reason 
why I advise the slave to be guided by a policy of peace 
is because he has no chance. If he had one, — if he haa 
as good a chance as those who went up to Lexingtoi. 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 87 

Beventy-seven years ago, — I should call him the basest 
recreant that ever deserted wife and child if he did not 
vindicate his liberty by his own right hand. [Cheers.] 
And I am not by any means pertain that Northern men 
would not be startled — would not be wholesomely star- 
tled — by one or two such cases as a scoundrel Busteed 
shot over his perjured affidavit. If a Morton or a Curtis 
could be shot on the commissioner's bench by the hand 
of him they sought to sacrifice, I have no doubt that it 
would have a wholesome effect. [Great applause.] Is 
there a man here who would, if he had arms in his 
hands, either himself go to Georgia, or let any one near 
and dear to him go there, without sending somebody 
before him to a lighter and cooler place than a Geor- 
gian plantation ? 

I am not dealing with the cause of three millions of 
slaves. I am not dealing with the question of a great sin 
and wrono; existing amono- us. I believe I understand the 
philosophy of reform. I understand the policy of waiting. 
I know that, in reforming great national abuses, we cannot 
expect to be in haste ; that the most efficient protection 
for the three milHon of slaves is to eradicate the prejudice 
of the twenty milUons of whites who stand above them. 
I have leai'nt all that. But, Mr. Chairman, the question 
to which I speak is a very different one. It is this. " I, 
William Crafts, an independent, isolated individual in my- 
self, am no more called to secure the safety of three million 
of slaves than you are. I, William Crafts, have succeeded 
in gettino; to Boston. I have reached what is called free 
territory. It happens that there are strong and sufficient 
reasons why I cannot leave these shores, or cannot yet 
leave them. I have got possession of arms. I have in- 
quired of the most intelligent men, and they tell me that 
the laws afford me no protection. I have asked of the 
highest authorities on government my duty in this emer- 



88 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

gency, and tliey tell me, one and all, from Grotius down 
to Lord Brougham, that when goveni^ent ceases to pro- 
tect, the citizen ceases to owe allegiance.* Very well. 
My case stands by itself. It is for me to decide to-night 
whether I will o;o back to Georo;ia to-morrow. It is no 
special comfort to assure me that, half a century hence, 
somebody will go down to Faneuil Hall, — some Robert 
C. Winthrop, perhaps, converted for the occasion, — and 
pronounce an oration on the jubilee of American freedom. 
It is no answer to tell me that, in order to this, it is con- 
sidered by some people to be a great thing that the fugitive 
should go willingly and quietly back to slavery. There 
comes up to me a man who says he is an officer, and has a 
parchment warrant in his pocket. Somebody has given 
him authority to seize me. I am not to be bullied by 
institutions. I am not to be frightened by parchments. 
Forms and theories are nothing to me. Majorities are 
nothing. You have outlawed me from yom- law. You 
have exiled me from your protection. I am a descendant 
of Esau, — every man's hand against me, my hand against 
every man. I have no time or means of escape, no de- 
fence, except I make it. If I make it, I secure the hour 
of liberty and escape. I decide to make it. I shoot the 
miscreant, and thus gain time to pass from the spot where 
I was to have been arrested, to freedom under the flag of 
England or on the deck of a vessel." Let him who fully 
knows his own heart and strength, and feels, as he looks 
down into his child's cradle, that he could stand by and 

* " Protection, your Lordships are aware, affording security of person and 
property, is the first law of the state. The Legislature has no right to claim 
obedience to its laws, tlie Crown lias no right to demand allegiance from its 
subjects, if the Legislature and the Crown do not afford, in return for both, 
protection for person and property. Without protection, the Legislature 
would abdicate its functions, if it demanded obedience ; without protection, 
the Crown would be a usurper of its right to enforce allegiance." — Lora 
Brougham's Debate on the Irish Coercion Bill, 1833. 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 89 

see that little nestling one borne away, and submit, — let 
him cast the first stone. But all you whose blood is wont 
to stir over Naseby and Bunker Hill will hold your peace, 
unless you are ready to cry, with me, Sic semper tyrannis ! 
So may it ever be with slave-hunters ! 

Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the man who is not 
conscientiously a non-resistant, is not only entitled, he is 
bound, to use every means that he has or can get to resist 
arrest in the last resort. What is the slave, when he is 
once surrendered ? He goes back to degradation worse 
than death. If he has children, they are to perpetuate 
that degradation. He has no right to sacrifice himself or 
them to that extent. These are considerations which it is 
just as well to state, and to bring before the community. 
I know my friend, Mr. Garrison, differs from me on this 
question. You will listen to him. I shall not quarrel 
if you agree with his judgment, and leave me alone. I 
am talking to-night to the men who say they were ready 
to take up theu^ muskets in defence of Thomas Sims, or 
Shadrach, or somebody else. It is very well for fiction 
— for a Harriet Beecher Stowe — to paint a submissive 
slave, and draw a picture that thrills your hearts. You 
are very sensitive over " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Your 
nerves are very sensitive ; see that your consciences are 
as sensitive as your nerves. If your hearts answered 
instead of your nerves, you would rise up every one of 
you Abolitionists, ready to sacrifice everything rather 
than a man should go back to slavery. Let me see that 
effect, and then I will reckon the value of the tears that 
have answered to the wand of this magician ; but till 
then, they are but the tears of a nervous reader under 
high excitement. Would those tears could crystallize into 
sentiment, crystallize into principle, — into Christian prin- 
ciple, out of which the weapon of antislavery patience and 
perseverance and self-sacrifice is to be wrought! Guard 



90 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

yourselves, friends, against tlie delusive idea, that the 
tears and sad eyes you see about you»are harbingers of a 
better hour for Massachusetts tlian this day twelve months 
saw darken over her fame. It may be so ; but there is 
no certainty that it will. We are to speak to practical 
Massachusetts. I do not shrink from soino; before the 
farmers, the mechanics, and the workingmen, — the 
thinking men of Massachusetts, — and urging upon them 
the consideration that the State, by solemn act, has 
proclaimed to every one that her soil is not holy enough 
to protect tlie fugitive, and that, so far as she is concerned, 
the only thing left, the only possibility, the only chance 
remainino; for the fiio-itive, lies in his own courao;e and 
good right arm. The city of John Hancock has proved 
that her soil is not holy enough to protect the fugitive ; 
Faneuil Hall, where " still the eloquent air breathes, 
burns," with Otis and Adams, is not holy enough to 
shelter the fugitive ; Bunker Hill, red with the blood 
of the noblest men who ever fell in the cause of civil 
liberty, is not too sacred for fettered feet ; the churches, 
planted, as we have been told to-day, in tears, in prayers, 
and in blood, have no altar-horns for the fugitive ; the 
courts, even that which first naturalized Lord Mansfield's 
decision, drawing a nice distinction between slaves brought 
and slaves escaping^ — j^^lges loving humanity so well, 
even in the humblest suitor, that, like their noble pre- 
decessors in the great case of DeVere, they " caught 
hold of a twig or a twine thread to uphold it " ; — that, 
too, has shut its doors on the fugitive, — yes, against 
that very child Med, should she again be seized, in whose 
behalf they settled this proud rule. I would say all this 
to the men about me, and add, — There is one gleam 
of hope. It is just possible that the floor of the State's 
prison may have a magic charm in it. That may save 
the fugitive, if he can once entitle himself to a place 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 91 

there. When, therefore, the occasion shall demand, let 
us try it ! [Great cheering.] It is a sad thought, that 
the possibihty of a gibbet, the chance of imprisonment 
for life, is the only cliance which can malvc it prudent for 
a fugitive to remain in Massachusetts. 

You will say this is bloody doctrine, — anarchical doc- 
trine ; it will prejudice people against the cause. I know 
it will. Heaven pardon those who make it necessaiy ! 
Heaven pardon the judges, the merchants, and the clergy, 
who make it necessary for hunted men to turn, when 
they are at bay, and fly at tlie necks of their pursuers ! 
It is not our fault ! I shrink from no question, however 
desperate, that has in it the kernel of possible safety 
for a human being hunted by twenty millions of slave- 
catchers in this Christian republic of ours. [Cheers.] 
I am willing to confess my faith. It is this : that the 
Christianity of this country is vv^orth nothing, except it 
is or can be made capable of dealing with the question 
of slavery. I am wilhng to confess another article of 
my faith : that the Constitution and government of tliis 
country is worth nothing, except it is or can be made 
capable of grappling with the great question of slavery. 
I agree with Burke : ^^ 1 have no idea of a liberty un- 
connected with honesty ajid justice. Nor do I believe that 
any good constitutions of government or of freedom can 
find it necessary for their security to doom any 'part of the 
people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of 
freedom^ if such can he., is in effect no more than another 
name for the tyranny of the strongest faction ; and factions 
in republics have been and are full as capable as monarchs 
of the most cruel oppression and injustice." That is the 
language of Edmund Burke to the electors of Bristol; 
I agree with it ! [Applause.] The greatest praise gov- 
ernment can win is, that its citizens Iviiow their rights, 
and dare to maintain them. The best use of good laws 
is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet. 



92 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

On these principles, I am willing to stand before the 
community in which I was born and brought up, — where 
I expect to live and die, — where, if I shall ever win any 
reputation, I expect to earn and to keep it. As a sane 
man, a Christian man, and a lover of my country, I am 
willing to be judged by posterity, if it shall ever remember 
either this meeting or the counsels which were given in 
its course. I am willing to stand upon this advice to the 
fugitive slave — baffled in every effort to escape, or bound 
here by sufficient ties, exiled from the protection of the 
law, shut out from the churches — to protect himself, 
and make one last appeal to the humane instincts of his 
fellow-men. Friends, it is time something should be said 
on these points. Twenty-six cases — twenty-six slave 
cases, under this last statute, have taken place in the 
single State of Pennsylvania. I do not believe one man 
in a hundred who hears me supposed there were half a 
dozen cases there. So silently, so mucli a matter of 
course, so much without any public excitement, have 
those slaves been surrendered ! Should the record be 
made up for the other States, it would probably be in 
proportion. Recollect, beside, the cases of kidnapping, 
not by any means unfrequent, which are so much facil- 
itated by the existence of laws lil^e this. For slaves to 
stay among us and be surrendered may excite commiser- 
ation ; but remember, and this is a very important con- 
sideration, familiarity with such scenes begets indifference ; 
the tone of public sentiment is lowered; soon cases pass 
as matters of course, and the community, bm^nt over with 
previous excitement, is doubly steeled against all active 
sympathy with the sufferers. What was usurpation yes- 
terday is precedent to-morrow. When we asked the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts to interfere in Sims's 
behalf, on the ground that the law of 1850 was uncon- 
stitutional, they dechned. because tlie law was much the 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 93 

aame as that of 1793, ard that was constitutional, because 
so HELD and submitted to. Surely, tyranny sliould have 
no such second acquiescence to plead. Yet that pubhc 
feeling, so alert, so indignant at the outset, already droops 
and grows cold. Government stands ever a united, pow- 
erful, and organized body, always in session, its tempta- 
tions creeping over the dulled senses, the wearied zeal, or 
the hour of want. The sympathies of a people for the 
down-trodden and the weak are scattered, evanescent, 
now excited, now asleep. The assembly which is red-hot 
to-day has vanished to-morrow. The indignation that 
lowers around a court-house in chains is scattered in a 
month. The guerilla troops of reform are now here, and 
now crumbled away. On the other hand, permanently 
planted, with a boundless patronage, which sways every- 
thing, stands government, with hands ever open, and 
eyes that never close, biding cunningly its time ; always 
concentrated ; and, of com^se, too often able to Avork its 
will, for a time, against any amount of popular indignation 
or sympathy. 

Do not misunderstand me. I know the antislavery 
cause will triumph. The mightiest intellects, the Web- 
sters and the Calhouns of the Whig and Democratic 
parties, — they have no more effect upon the great mass 
of the public mind, in the long run, than the fly's weight 
had on the chariot-wheel where he lighted. But that is 
a long battle. I am speaking now of death or life, to be 
dealt out in a moment. I am dealing with a family about 
to be separated, standing, as many of you have been called 
again and again to do, by the hearth, or at the table, 
where that family circle were never to assemble again ; 
broken and scattered to the four winds ; the wife in 
agony, her husband torn from her side, her childi-en 
gathering around, vainly asking, " Where are we to go, 
mother ? " Open those doors ! How many of them 



94 SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 

might you open in these Northern States within the last 
two years ! How many of these utterly indescribable 
scenes might you have witnessed Avithin that brief period ! 
This law has executed itself. Twenty-six have been sent 
back from Pennsylvania ; only one from Boston ; only a 
dozen, perhaps, from New York. Yes ; but, in the mean 
time, the dread that they might be seized has broken up 
h dreds of happy famihes. It has been executed : and 
when I remember that Northern traitor who made its 
enactment possible, I sometimes think that the vainest 
man who ever lived never dreamed, in the hour of his 
fondest self-conceit, that he had done the human race as 
much good as Daniel Webster has wrought it sorrow and 
despair. [Great applause.] I do not think you fully 
appreciate the state of dread in which the colored popula- 
tion has lived for months. 

Mark, too, the infamous characteristics of these cases ! 
It is not their frequency, after all, that should cause the 
most apprehension, but the objectional incidents and very 
dangerous precedents they establish. It is not that the 
slave act is law. That is not half the enormity of the 
fact. It is, that not only is the slave statute held to be 
law, but that there is really no law beside it in the Free 
States, — to execute it, all other laws are set aside and 
disregarded. The commonest and best settled principles 
have been trodden under foot. Almost all these persons 
have been arrested by a lie. Sims was, — Long was, — 
Preston was. In the case at Buffalo, the man was ar- 
rested by a bloodthirsty attack, — knocked down in the 
streets. The atrocious haste, the brutal haste of Judge 
Kane, in the case of Hannah Kellam, language fails in 
describing, — indignation stands dumb before the cold and 
brutal wickedness. Many of these cases have been a 
perversion, not only of all justice, but of all law. Take a 
sino-le and slio-ht instance. The merciful and safe rule 



SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 95 

has always been, that an officer, arresting any one wrong- 
fully, shall not be permitted to avail himself of his illegal 
act for the service of a true warrant while he has the man 
in custody. This would be not only a sanction, but an 
encouraofement, of illeo-al detention. But, in several of 
these cases, the man has been seized on some false pre- 
tence, known to be a sham, and then the authorities al- 
lowed those having him in custody to waive the prosecu- 
tion of the pretended claim, and serve upon him the real 
warrant. The same disgraceful proceeding was allowed 
in the Latimer case in this city, his master arresting him 
as a thief, and afterwards dismissing that process, and 
claiming him as a slave. This dangerous precedent has 
been followed in many of these late cases. The spirit of 
the rule, and in some cases its letter, Avould have set the 
prisoner free, and held void all the proceedings. 

Amid this entire overthrow of legal safeguards, this 
utter recklessness of all the checks which the experience 
of ages has invented for the control of the powerful and 
the protection of the weak, it is idle to dream of any col- 
ored person's being safe. They stand alone, exposed to the 
whole pelting of this pitiless storm. I wish there existed 
here any feeling on this subject adequate to the crisis. 
Is there such ? Do you point me to the past triumphs 
of the antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts ? The list 
is short, we know it by heart. Yes, there has been 
enough of feeling and effort to send Charles Sumner to 
the Senate. Let us still believe that the event will justify 
us in trusting him, spite of his silence there for four long 
months, — silence when so many ears have been waiting 
for the promised words. There is an antislavery senti- 
ment here of a certain kind. Test it, and let us see what 
it is worth. There is antislavery sentiment enough to 
crowd our Legislature with Free-Soilers. True. Let us 
wait for some fruit, correspondent to their pledges, before 
we rejoice too loudly. Heaven arrant us the sight of 



96 SIMS ANInIVERSARY. 

some before we be forced to borrow from our fathers a 
name for these legislative committees ©f Free-Soilers. In 
1765 there were certain Parliamentary committees, to 
whom were referred the petitions of the Colonists, and 
many good plans of relief, and that was the last heard 
of either petition or plan. Our fathers called them 
" committees of oblivion." I hope we may never need 
that title again ; and wherever we find the untarnished 
name of Sewall, we need have no apprehension. 

Yes, there is antislavery sentiment sufficient to put 
many persons on their good behavior, — sufficient to 
bring Orville Dewey to his knees, and make him at- 
tempt to lie himself out of a late delicate embarrassment, 
[Great applause.] That, to be sure, is the only way for 
a true-bred American to apologize ! Some men blame us 
for the personality of our attacks, — for the bad taste of 
actually naming a sinner on such a platform as this. 
Never doubt its benefits again. Did not the reverend 
doctor " go to and fro in the earth, and walk up and 
down in it," offering to return his own mother into 
slavery for our dear Union ; and was he not rewarded 
by our national government with a chaplaincy in the na- 
vy, — as most men thought to secure him a trip to the 
Mediterranean, and repose his wearied virtue ? Where 
could public rumor more appropriately send him than to 
that very spot on the Naples coast, where his great and 
only exemplar, Nero, devoted his mother to a kinder fate 
than this Christian imitator desio-ned for a " venerable 
relative " ! Could he have passed his life at Bauli, the 
genius of the place would have protected her well-deserving 
son, and all had been well. But here a certain " rub- 
a-dub agitation " had done so much mischief, that even 
the Unitarian denomination could not uphold its eminent 
leader till he had explained that he did not mean his " ven- 
erable relative," he only meant his son ! How clear the 
lesson to that son not to treat others as thev treat hmi. — 



SIMS ANNTVERSARY. 97 

Since then lie might be led t- do what even his father 
deems inhuman, namely, return iiis " venerable relative " 
into slavery to save a Union ! Does Dr. Dewey indeed 
think it " extravagant and ridiculous to consent *' to re- 
turn one's mother to slaveiy ? Oil what principle, then, 
it has been well asked, does he demand that every colored 
son submit patiently to have it done ? Does his Bible 
read that God did not make of one blood all nations ? 

Yes, we have antislavery feeling and character enough 
to humble a Dewey ; we want more, — want enough to 
save a Sims, — to give safe shelter to Ellen Crafts. "Hide 
the outcast, bewray not him that wandereth," is the 
simplest lesson of common humanity. The Common- 
wealth, which, planted by exiles, proclaimed by statute 
in 1641 her Avelcome to " ani/ stranger who might fly to 
her from tJie ti/ranng or oppression of their persecutors,^^ — 
the State which now seeks 'J^j peace in liberty," should 
not content herself with this: her rebuke of the tyrant, 
her voice of Avelcome to the oppressed, should be uttered 
so loud as to be heard throughout the South. It should 
not be necessary to hide the outcast. It ought not to be 
counted merit now that one does not lift hand against 
him. O no ! fidelity to ancient fame, to present honor, 
to duty, to God, demands that the fugitive from the op- 
pressions of other lands should be able to go up and down 
our highway in peace, — tell his true name, meet his 
old oppressor face to face, and feel that a whole Common- 
v/ealth stands between him and all cliance of harm. 

" Grod save the Commomvealth of Massachusetts I '* 
How coldly, often, does the old prayer fall from careless 
lips ! How sure to reach the ear of Him, who heareth 
the sighing of the prisoner, when it shall rise, in ecstasy 
of gratitude, from the slave-hut of the Carolinas, or from 
the bursting heart of the fugitive, who, after deadly peril, 
rests at last beneath the shadow of her protection I 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 



M^ 



■R. CHAIRMAN : I have to present, from the busi- 
ness committee, tlie following resolution : — 

^^ Resolved, That the ohject of this society is now, as it has 
always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments ad- 
dressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a 
heinous crime, and that the duty, safety, and interest of all 
concerned demand its immed''ite aboUtion, without expatria- 
tion." ' 

I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objections that 
have been made to our course ever since Mr. Garrison 
began his career, and which have been lately urged again, 
with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of 
the London Leader, the able organ of a very respectable 
and influential class in England, i hope, Sir, you wdll 
not think it waste of time to bring such a subject before 
vou. I know these objections have been made a thousand 
times, that they have been often answered, J:hough we 
generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let 
results speak for us. But there are times when justice 
to the slave will not allow us to be silent. There are 
many in this country, many in England, who have had 
their attention turned, recently, to the antislavery cause. 
They are asking, " Which is the best and most efficient 

* Speech before the Massachnsetts Antislavery Society, at the Melodeon, 
Boston, January 27, 1853. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 99 

method of helping it ? " Engaged ourselves in an effort 
for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto 
approved, we are very properly desirous that they should 
join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the full 
tide of their new zeal and great resources. Thoroughly 
convinced ourselv^es that our course is wise, we can hon- 
estly urge others to adopt it. Long experience gives us a 
right to advise. The fact that our course, more than all 
other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened 
these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them. 
They are our spiritual children : for their sakes, we would 
free the cause we love and trust from every seeming de- 
fect and plausible objection. For the slave's sake, we reit- 
erate our explanations, that he may lose no tittle of help 
by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends. 

All that I have to say on these points will be to you, 
Mr. Chairman, very trite g'" d familiar ; but the facts may 
be new to some, and I prefer to state them here, in Bos- 
ton, where we have lived and worked, because, if our 
statements are incorrect, if we claim too much, our asser- 
tions can be easily answered and disproved. 

The charges to which I refer are these : that, in deal- 
ing with slaveholders and their apologists, we indulge in 
fierce denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason 
and common sense by plain statements and fair argument ; 
— that we might have won the sympathies and support of 
the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this ques- 
tion with a manly patience ; but, instead of this, we have 
outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust 
and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, 
and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading 
men, who wel^e often honest in their intentions., however 
mistaken in their views ; — that we have utterly neglected 
the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, 
submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by 



100 THE PHILOSOPHY QP. /. -. . A. 

no foresight, but hurried on in childish, reckless, blind, and 
hot-headed zeal, — bigots in the narrowness of our views, 
and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and malignant 
judgment of other men's motives. 

There are some who come upon our platform, and give 
us the aid of names and reputations less burdened than 
ours with popular odium, who are perpetually urging us to 
exercise charity in our judgments of those about us, and to 
consent to argue these questions. These men are ever 
parading their wish to draw a line between themselves and 
us, because tliey must he i^ermitted to wait, — to trust more 
to reason than feeling, — to indulge a generous charity, — 
to rely on the sure influence of simple truth, uttered in 
love, &c., &c. I reject with scorn all these implications 
that our judgments are uncharitable, — that ive are lacking 
in patience, — that ive have any other dependence than on 
the simple truth, spoken with Ciiristian frankness, yet with 
Christian love. These lectures, to which you. Sir, and all 
of us, have so often listened, would be impertinent, if they 
were not rather ridiculous for the gross ignorance they 
betray of the community, of the cause, and of the whole 
course of its friends. 

The article in the Leader to which I refer is sio;ned 
" Ion,*' and may be found in the Liberator of December 
17, 1852. The writer is cordial and generous in his recog- 
nition of Mr. Garrison's claim to be the representative of 
the antislavery movement, and does entire justice to his 
motives and character. The criticisms of " Ion " were 
reprinted in the Christian Register, of this city, the organ 
of the Unitarian denomination. The editors of that paper, 
with their usual Christian courtesy, love of truth, and fair- 
dealing, omitted all '' Ion's " expressions of regard for Mr. 
Garrison and appreciation of his motives, and reprinted 
only those parts of the article which undervalue his saga- 
city and influence, and indorse the common objections to 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. IQl 

his metliod and views. You will see in a moment, Mr. 
President, that it is with such men and presses " Ion " 
thinks Mr. Garrison has not heen sufficiently wise and 
patient, in trying to win their help for the antislavery 
cause. Perhaps, were he on the spot, it would tire even 
his patience, and puzzle even his sagacity, to make any 
other use of them than that of the drunken Helot, — - a 
warning to others how disgusting is mean vice. Perhaps, 
were he here, he would see that the best and only use to 
be made of them is to let them unfold their own charac- 
ters, and then show the world how rotten our politics and 
religion are, that they naturally bear such fruit. " Ion " 
quotes Mr. Garrison's original declaration, in the Liber- 
- ator : — 

" I am aware that many object to tlie severity of my language ; 
but is there not cause for severity ? I will be as harsh as truth, 
and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest, — I will not 
equivocate, — I will not excuse, — I will not retreat a single 

inch, AND I WILL BE HEARD. 

" It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation 
by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my 
measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influ- 
ence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable 
extent, and shall be felt in coming years, — not perniciously, but 
' beneficially, — not as a curse, but as a blessing ; and posterity 
will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that 
he enables me to disregard ' the fear of man, which bringeth a 
snare,' and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power." 

" Ion " then goes on to say : — 

" This is a defence which has been generally accepted on this 
side of the Atlantic, and many are the Abolitionists among us 
whom it has encouraged in honesty and impotence, and whom it 
has converted into conscientious hinderances 

" We would have Mr. Garrison to say, ' I will be as harsh as 
progress, as uncompromising as success.' If a man speaks for his 
own gratification, he may be as ' harsh ' as he pleases ; but if he 



102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

speaks for tlie do^vn-t^oclden and oppressed, he must be content 
to put a curb upon the tongue of holiest passion, and speak only 
as harshly as is compatible with the amelioration of the evil he 
proposes to redress. Let the question be again repeated: Do 
you seek for the slave vengeance or redress ? K you seek retali- 
ation, go on denouncing. But distant Eurof)e honors AVilliam 
Lloyd Garrison because it credits him ^nth. seeking for the slave 
simply redress. We say, therefore, that ' uncompromising ' policy 
is not to be measured by absolute justice, but by practical ameli- 
oration of the slave's condition. Amelioration as fast as you can 
get it, — absolute justice as soon as you can reach it." 

He quotes the sentiment of Confucius, that he would 
choose for a leader " a man who would maintain a steady 
vigilance in the direction of affairs, who was capable of 
forming plans, and of executing them," and says : — 

" The philosopher was right in placing wisdom and executive 
capacity above courage ; for, down to this day, our popular move- 
ments are led by heroes who fear nothing, and who win noth- 
ing 

" There is no question raised in these articles as to the Avork 
to be done, but only as to the mode of really doing it. The plat- 
form resounds with announcements of principle, which is but 
asserting the right, while notliing but contempt is showered on 
policy, which is the realization of right. The air is filled ^^^th 
all liigh cries and spirited denunciations ; indignation is at a pre- 
mium ; and this is called advocacy But to calculate, 

to make sure of your aim, is to be descried as one who is too cold 
to feel, too genteel to strike." 

Fui'ther on, lie observes ; — 

" If an artillery officer throws shell after shell which never 
reach the enemy, he is replaced by some one with a better eje 
and a surer aim. But in the artillery battle of opinion, to mean 
to hit is quite sufficient ; and if you have a certain grand indiffi^r- 
ence as to whether you hit or not, you may count on public ap- 
plause 

" A man need be no less militant, as the soldier of facts, than 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 103 

as the a^ it of swords- But the arena of argument needs dis- 
cipline less than that of arms. It is this which the anti- 
slavei^ party seem to me not only to overlook, but to despise. 
They do not put their valor to drill. Neither on the field nor 
the platform has courage any inherent capacity of taking care 
of itself" 

The writer then proceeds to make a quotation from Mr. 
Emerson, the latter part of which I will read : — 

" Let us withhold every reproachful, and, if we can, every 
indignant remark. In this cause, we must renounce our temper, 
and the risings of pride. If there be any man who thinks the 
ruin of a race of men a small matter compared with the last 
decorations and completions of his own comfort, — who would 
not so much as part with his ice-cream to save them from rapine 
and manacles, — I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man 
tiiat also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing 
the negro nation on a fair footing, than by robbing them. If the 
Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his vas- 
salage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants, 
their silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, 
and would not exchange them for the more intelligent but pre- 
carious liired services of whites, I shall not refuse to show him 
that, when their free papers are made out, it will still be their 
interest to remain on his estates ; and that the oldest planters 
of Jamaica ai-e convinced that it is cheaper to pay wages than 
to own slaves." 

The critic takes exception to Mr. Garrison's approval of 
the denunciatory language in which Daniel O'Connell 
rebuked the giant sin of America, and concludes his article 
with this sentence : — 

" Wlien William Lloyd Garrison praises the great Celtic 
monarch of invective for this dire outpouring, he acts the part 
of the boy Avho fancies that the terror is in the war-whoop of the 
savage, unmindful of the quieter muskets of the civiUzed infantry, 
whose unostentatious execution blows whoop and tomahawk to 
the Devil." 



104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Before passing to a consideration of these remarks of 
" Ion," let me say a word in relation to Mr. Emerson. I 
do not consider him as indorsinei; any of these criticisms 
on the Abolitionists. His services to the most radical 
antislavery movement have been generous and marked. 
He has never shrunk from any odium which lending his 
name and voice to it would incur. Making fair allowance 
for his peculiar taste, habits, and genius, he has given a 
generous amount of aid to the antislavery movement, and 
never let its friends want his cordial " God-speed." 

" Ion's " charges are the old ones, that we Abolitionists 
are hurting our own cause, — that, instead of waiting for 
the community to come up to our views, and endeavoring 
to remove prejudice and enlighten ignorance by patient 
explanation and fair argument, we fall at once, like chil- 
dren, to abusing everything and everybody, — that we 
imagine zeal will supply the place of common sense, — 
that we have never shown any sagacity in adapting our 
means to our ends, have never studied the national char- 
acter, or attempted to make use of the materials which lay 
all about us to influence public opinion, but by blind, 
childish, obstinate fury and indiscriminate denunciation, 
have become " honestly impotent, and conscientious 
hinderances." 

These, Sir, are the charges which have uniformly been 
broucrht ao;ainst all reformers in all ao-es. " Ion " thinks 
the same faults are chargeable on the leaders of all the 
" popular movements " in England, which, he says, " are 
led by heroes who fea?' nothing and who win nothing." 
If the leaders of popular movements in Great Britain for 
the last fifty years have been losers, I should be curious to 
know what party, in '^ Ion's " opinion, have won ? My 
Lord Derby and his friends seem to think Democracy has 
made, and is making, dangerous headway. If the men 
who, by popular agitation, outside of Parliament, wrung 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 105 

from a powerful oligarchy Parliamentary Reform, and the 
Abolition of the Test Acts, of High Post Rates, of Catholic 
Disability, of Negro Slavery and the Corn Laws, did " not 
win anything," it would be hard to say what winning is. 
If the men who, without the ballot, made Peel their tool 
and conquered the Duke of Wellington, are considered 
unsuccessful, pray what kind of a thing would success be ? 
Those who now, at the head of that same middle class, 
demand the separation of Church and State, and the 
Extension of the Ballot, may well guess, from the fluttering 
of Whig and Tory dove-cotes, that soon they will " win " 
that same "nothing." Heaven grant they may enjoy the 
same ill success with their predecessors ! On our side of 
the ocean, too, we ought deeply to sympathize with the 
leaders of the temperance movement in their entire want 
of success ! If " Ion's " mistakes about the antislavery 
cause lay as much on the surface as those I have just 
noticed, it would be hardly worth while to reply to him ; 
for as to these, he certainly exhibits only " the extent and 
variety of his misinformation." 

His remarks upon the antislavery movement are, how- 
ever, equally inaccurate. I claim, before you Avho know 
the true state of the case, — I claim for the antislavery 
movement with which this society is identified, that, look- 
ing back over its whole course, and considering the men 
connected with it in the mass, it has been marked by 
sound judgment, unerring foresight, the most sagacious 
adaptation of means to ends, the strictest self-discipline, 
the most thorough research, and an amount of patient and 
manly argument addressed to the conscience and intellect 
of the nation, such as no other cause of the kind, in Eng- 
land or this country, has ever offered. I claim, also, that 
its course has been marked by a cheerful surrender of 
all individual claims to merit or leadership, — the most 
cordial welcoming of the slightest effort, of every honest 



106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

attempt, to ligliten or to break the chain of the slave. I 
need not waste time by repeating the superfluous con- 
fession that we are men, and therefore do not claim to be 
perfect. Neither would I be understood as denying that 
we use denunciation, and ridicule, and every other weapon 
that the human mind knows. We must plead guilty, if 
there be guilt in not knowing how to separate the sin from 
the sinner. With all the fondness for abstractions at- 
tributed to us, we are not yet capable of that. We are 
fighting a momentous battle at desperate odds, — one 
against a thousand. Every weapon that ability or igno- 
rance, wit, wealth, prejudice, or fashion can command, ig 
pointed against us. The guns are shotted to their lips. 
The arrows are poisoned. Fighting against sucli an array, 
we cannot afford to confine om'selves to any one weapon. 
The cause is not ours, so that we might, rightfully, post- 
pone or put in peril the victory by moderating our de- 
mands, stifling our convictions, or filing down our rebukes, 
to gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare the 
delicate nerves of our neighbor. Our clients are three 
millions of Christian slaves, standing dumb suppliants at 
the threshold of the Christian world. They have no 
voice but ours to utter their complaints, or to demand 
justice. The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the litera- 
ture, the prejudices, the political arrangements, the 
present self-interest of the country, are all against us. 
God has given us no weapon but the truth, faitlifully 
uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets' directness, 
to the conscience of the individual sinner. The elements 
which control public opinion and mould the masses are 
against us. We can but pick off" here and there a man 
from the triumphant majority. We have facts for those 
who think, arguments for those who reason ; but he who 
cannot be reasoned out of his prejudices must be laughed 
out of them ; he who cannot be argued out of his selfish- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 107 

ness must be shamed out of it by the muTor of his hateful 
self held up relentlessly before his eyes. We live in a 
land whei'e every man makes broad his phylactery, in-- 
scribing thereon, " All men are created equal," — "God 
hath made of one blood all nations of men." It seems to 
us that in such a land there must be, on this question of 
slavery, sluggards to be awakened, as well as doubters to 
be conTinced. Many more, we verily believe, of the first 
than of the last. There are far more dead liearts to be 
quickened, than confused intellects to be cleared up, — 
more dumb dogs to be made to speak, than doubting 
consciences to be enlightened. [Loud cheers.] We 
have use, then, sometimes, for something beside argu- 
ment. 

What is the denunciation with which we are charcred ? 
It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to de- 
clare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of 
men, — of separating husband and wife, — taking the 
infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to pros- 
titution, — of a professedly Christian nation denying, by 
statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its 
population, and making it illegal for " two or three " to 
meet together, except a white man be present ! What 
is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are 
charged? It is simply holding the intelligent and delib- 
erate actor responsible for the character and consequences 
of his acts. Is there anything inherently wrong in such 
denunciation or such criticism ? This we may claim, — 
we have never judged a man but out of his own mouth. 
We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, except for 
acts of which he and his owti friends were proud. All 
that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are 
the principles and deeds on which the American pulpit 
and American public men plume themselves. We always 
allow our opponents to paint their own pictures. Our 



108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

humble duty is to stand by and assure the spectators thai 
what they would take for a knave or ajiyjiocrite is really, 
in American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity or Secretary 
of State.* 

The South is one great brothel, where half a million of 
women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are 
degraded to believe it honorable. The public squares 
of half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn 
asunder at the auction-block ; no one of our fair rivers 
that has not closed over the nem-o seekino- in death a 
refuge from a life too wretched to bear ; thousands of 
fugitives skulk along our highways, afi'aid to tell their 
names, and trembling at the sight of a human being ; 
free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into 
that hell of slavery ; and now and then one, as if by mir- 

* A paragraph from the New England Farmer, of tliis city, has gone the 
rounds of the press, and is generally believed. It says : — 

" We learn, on reliable authority, that Mr. Webster confessed to a warm 
political friend, a short time before his death, that the great mistake of his 
life was the famous Seventh of JVIarch Speech, in which, it will be remem- 
bered, he defended the Fugitive Slave Law, and fully committed himself to 
the Compromise Measures. Before taking his stand on that occasion, he is 
said to have corresponded with Professor Stuart, and other eminent divines, 
to ascertain how far the religious sentiment of the North would sustain 
him in the position he was about to assume." 

Some sa}"- this " warm political friend " was a clergyman ! Consider a 
moment the language of this statement, the form it takes on every lip and 
in every press. " The great mistake of his life " ! Seventy years old, 
brought up in New England churches, witli all the culture of the world at 
his command, his soul melted by the repeated loss of those dearest to 
him, a great statesman, with a heart, according to his admirers, yet tcndei 
and fresh, — one who bent in such agony over the death-bed of his first 
daughter, — he looks back on this speech, which his friends say changed the 
feelings 6f ten millions of people, and made it possible to enact and exe- 
cute the Fugitive Slave Law. He sees that it flooded the hearth-stones of 
thousands of colored men with wretchedness and despair, — crazed the 
mother, and broke the heart of the wife, — putting the virtue of woman 
and the liberty of man in the power of the vilest, — and all, as he at least 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 109 

acle, after long years, returns to make men aghast with 
his tale. The press says, "It is all right"; and the 
pulpit cries, "Amen." They print the Bible in every 
tongue in which man utters his prayers ; and get the 
money to do so by agreeing never to give the book, in 
the language our mothers taught us, to any negro, free or 
bond, south of Mason and Dixon's line. The press says, 
"It is all right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." The 
slave lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in every face 
but ours the face of an enemy. Prove to me now that 
harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation, scathing sarcasm, 
and pitiless ridicule are wholly and always unjustifiable ; 
else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any 
weapon which ever broke up the crust of an ignorant 
prejudice, roused a slumbering conscience, shamed a 
proud sinner, or changed, in any way, the conduct of a 

now saw, for nothino:. Yet one who, according to his worshippers, was 
"the grandest growth of our soil and our institutions," looked back on 
such an act, and said — what? With one foot in the grave, said what of it? 
" I did wrong " 1 "I committed a foul outrage on my brother man " ? 
" I sported too carelessly with the welfare of the poor " 1 Was there no 
moral chord in that heart, " the grandest growth of our soil and om- insti- 
tutions " ? No ! He said, " I made a mistake ! " Not, " I was false in 
my stewardship of these great talents and this high position ! " No ! 
But on the chess-board of the political game, I made a bad move ! I 
threw away my chances ! A gambler, I did not understand my cards ! 
And to whom does he offer this acknowledgment ? To a clergyman ! the 
representative of the moral sense of the community ! What a picture ! 
We laugh at tlie lack of heart in Talleyrand, when he says, " It is worse 
than a crime, a blunder." ' Yet all our New-Englander can call this mo- 
mentous crime of his life is — a mistake ! 

Whether this statement be entirely true or not, we all know it is 
exactly the tone in which all about us talk of that speech. If the state- 
ment be true, what an entire want of right feeling and moral 'sensibility it 
shows in Mr. Webster ! If it be unfounded, still the welcome it has re- 
ceived, and the ready belief it has gained, show the popular appreciation 
'of him, and of such a crime. Such is the public with which Abolitionists, 
have to deal. 



110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

human being. Our aim is to alter public opinion. DI*d 
we live in a market, our talk should *be of dollars and 
cents, and we would seek to prove only that slavery was 
an unprofitable investment. Were the nation one great, 
pure church, we would sit down and reason of "riglit- 
eousness, temperance, and judgment to come." Had 
slavery fortified itself in a college, we would load our 
cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with argu- 
ments. But we happen to live in the world, — the world 
made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self- 
interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must 
reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Chris- 
tian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in 
the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our 
object long before the nation is made over into saints or 
elevated into philosophers. To change public opinion, we 
use the very tools by which it was formed. That is, all 
such as an honest man may touch. 

All this I am not only ready to allow, but I should be 
ashamed to think of the slave, or to look into the face of 
my fellow-man, if it were otherwise. It is the only thing 
which justifies us to our own consciences, and makes us 
able to say we have done, or at least tried to do, our duty. 

So far, however you distrust my philosophy, you will 
not doubt my statements. That we have denounced and 
rebuked with unsparing fidelity will not be denied. Have 
we not also addressed ourselves to that other duty, of ar- 
guing our question thoroughly ? — of using due discretion 
and fair sagacity in endeavoring to promote our cause? 
Yes, we have. Every statement we have made has been 
doubted. Every principle we have laid down has been 
denied by overwhelming majorities against us. No one 
step has ever been gained but by the most laborious 
research and the most exhaustinsj arojument. And no 
question has ever, since Revolutionary days, been so thor- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. Ill 

oughly investigated or argued iiere, as that of slavery. 
Of that research and that argument, of the whole of it, 
the old-fashioned, fanatical, crazy Garrisonian antislavery 
movement has been the author. From this band of men 
has proceeded every important argument or idea which 
iias been broached on the antislavery question from 1830 
to the present time. [Cheers.] I am well aware of the 
extent of the claim I make. I recognize, as fully as any 
one can, the ability of the new laborers, — the eloquence 
and genius with which they have recommended this cause 
to the nation, and flashed conviction home on the con- 
science of the community. I do not mean, either, to 
assert that they have in every instance borrowed from our 
treasury their facts and arguments. Left to themselves, 
they would probably have looked up the one and origi- 
nated the other. As a matter of fact, however, they have 
generally made use of the materials collected to their 
hands. But there are some persons about us, sympathiz- 
ers to a great extent with " Ion," who pretend that the 
antislavery movement has been hitherto mere fanaticism, 
its only weapon angry abuse. They are obliged to assert 
this, in order to justify their past indifference or hostihty. 
At present, when it suits their purpose to give it some at- 
tention, they endeavor to explain the change by alleging 
that now it has been taken up by men of thoughtful 
minds, and its claims are urged by fair discussion and able 
argument. My claim, then, is this : that neither the char- 
ity of the most timid of sects, the sagacity of our wisest 
converts, nor the culture of the ripest scholars, though all 
have been aided by our twenty years' experience, has yet 
struck out any new method of reaching the public mind, 
or originated any new argument or train of thought, or 
discovered any new fact bearing on the question. When 
once brought fully into the struggle, they have found it 
necessary to adopt the sarne nieans, to rely on the same 



112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

arguments, to hold up the same men and the same meas- 
ures to public reprobation, with the same bold rebuke and 
unsparing invective that we have used. All their con- 
ciliatory bearing, their painstaking moderation, their con- 
stant and anxious endeavor to draw a broad line between 
their camp and ours, have been thrown away. Just so 
far as they have been effective laborers, they have found, 
as we have, their hands against every man, and every 
man's hand against them. The most experienced of them 
are ready to acknowledge that our plan has been wise, our 
course efficient, and that our unpopularity is no fault of 
ours, but flows necessarily and unavoidably from our posi- 
tion. " I should suspect," says old Fuller, " that liis 
preaching had no salt in it, if no galled horse did wince." 
Our friends find, after all, that men do not so much hate 
us as the truth we utter and the light we bring. They 
find that the community are not the honest seekers after 
truth which they fancied, but selfish politicians and secta- 
rian bigots, who shiver, like Alexander's butler, whenever 
the sun shines on them. Experience has driven these 
new laborers back to our method. We have no quarrel 
with them, — would not steal one wreath of their laurels. 
All we claim is, that, if they are to be complimented as 
prudent, moderate, Christian, sagacious, statesmanlike re- 
formers, we deserve the same praise ; for they have done 
nothing that we, in our measure, did not attempt before. 
[Cheers.] 

I claim this, that the cause, in its recent aspect, has put 
on nothing but timidity. It has taken to itself no new 
weapons of recent years ; it has become more compromis- 
ing, — that is all ! It has become neither more persua- 
sive, more learned, more Christian, more charitable, nor 
more effective than for the twenty years preceding. Mr. 
Hale, the head of the Free Soil movement, after a career 
in the Senate that would do honor to any man, — after a 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 113 

six years' course which entitles him to the respect and 
confidence of the antislavery pubhc, — can put his name, 
within the last month, to an appeal from the city of 
Washington, signed by a Houston and a Cass, for a monu- 
ment to be raised to Henry Clay ! If that be the test of 
charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the world. 
[Loud cheers.] Some of the leaders of the Free Soil 
party of Massachusetts, after exhausting the whole capa- 
city of our language to paint the treachery of Daniel 
Webster to the cause of liberty, and the evil they thought 
he was able and seeking to do, — after that, could feel it 
in their hearts to parade themselves in the funeral proces- 
sion got up to do him honor ! In this we allow we cannot 
follow them. The deference which every gentleman owes 
to the proprieties of social life, that self-respect and re- 
gard to consistency which is every man's duty, — these, if 
no deeper feelings, will ever prevent us from giving such 
proofs of this newly-invented Christian courtesy. [Great 
cheering.] We do not play politics ; antislavery is no 
half-jest with us ; it i« a terrible earnest, with life or death, 
worse than life or death, on the issue. It is no lawsuit, 
where it matters not to the good feeling of opposing coun- 
sel which Avay the verdict goes, and where advocates can 
shake hands after the decision as "pleasantly as before. 
When we think of such a man as Henry Clay, his long 
life, his mighty influence cast always into the scale against 
the slave, — of that irresistible fascination with which he 
moulded every one to his will ; when we remember that, 
his conscience acknowledging the justice of our cause, 
and his heart open on every other side to the gentlest im- 
pulses, he could sacrifice so remorsely his convictions and 
the welfare of millions to his low ambition ; when we 
think how the slave trembled at the sound of his voice, 
and that, from a multitude of breaking hearts there went 
up nothing but gratitude to God when it pleased him \q 



114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

call that great sinner from this world, — we cannot find it 
in our hearts, we could not shape our lips to ask any man 
to do him honor. [Great sensation.] No amount of 
eloquence, no sheen of official position, no loud grief of 
partisan friends, would ever lead us to ask monuments or 
walk in fine processions for pirates ; and the sectarian zeal 
or selfish ambition which gives up, deliberately and in full 
knowledge of the facts, three million of human beings to 
hopeless ignorance, daily robbery, systematic prostitution, 
and murder, which the law is neither able nor undertakes 
to prevent or avenge, is more monstrous, in our eyes, than 
the love of gold Avhich takes a score of lives with merciful 
quickness on the high seas. Haynau on the Danube is no 
more hateful to us than Haynau on the Potomac. Why 
give mobs to one, and monuments to the other ? 

If these things be necessary to courtesy, I cannot claim 
that we are courteous. We seek only to be honest men, 
and speak the same of the dead as of the living. If the 
grave that hides their bodies could swallow also the evil 
they have done and the example they leave, we might 
eniov at least the luxury of foro-ettino; them. But the 
evil that men do lives after them, and example acquires 
tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave. His- 
tory, also, is to be wntten. How shall a feeble minority, 
without weight or influence in the country, with no jury 
of millions to appeal to, — denounced, vilified, and con- 
temned, — how shall we make way against the over- 
whelming weight of some colossal reputation, if we do 
not turn from the idolatrous present, and appeal to the 
human race ? saying to your idols of to-day, "Here we 
are defeated ; but we will write our judgment with the 
iron pen of a century to come, and it shall never be 
forgotten, if we can help it, that you were false in your 
generation to the claims of the slave ! " [Loud cheers.] 

At present, our leading men, strong in the support of 



THE ABOLITION MOVE^MENT. Il5 

, large majorities, and counting safely on the p "dices of 
'Vthe community, can afford to despise us. 'I'^Y knosy 
they can overawe or cajole the Present ; their only tear 
is the judgment of the Future. Strange fear, 'perhaps, 
consideriufT how short and local their fame ! But however 
little, it is their all. Our onlvliold upon them is the 
thovight of that bar of posterity, before which we are all 
to stand. Tlninlv God ! there is the elder brother of the 
Saxon race across the water, — there is the army of hon- 
est men to come ! Before that jury we suminon you. 
We are weak here, — out-talked, out-voted. You load 
our names with infamy, and shout us down. But our 
words bide their time. We warn the living that we have 
terrible memories, and that their sins are never to be for- 
gotten. We will gibbet the name of every apostate so 
black and high that his children's children shall blush to 
bear it. Yet we bear no malice, — cherish no resentment. 
We thank God that the love of fame, " that last infirmity 
of noble mind," is shared by the ignoble. In our neces- 
sity, we seize this weapon in the slave's behalf, and teach 
caution to the living by meting out relentless justice to 
the dead. How strange the change death produces in the 
way a man is talked about here ! While leading men 
live, they avoid as much as possible all mention of slavery, 
from fear of being thought Abolitionists. The moment 
they are dead, their friends rake up every word they ever 
contrived to whisper in a corner for liberty, and parade it 
before the world ; growing angry, all the while, with us, 
because we insist on explaining these chance expressions 
by the tenor of a long and base life. While drunk with 
the temptations of the present hour, men are willing to 
bow to any Moloch. When their friends bury them, they 
feel what bitter mockery, fifty years hence, any epitaph 
will be, if it cannot record of one living in this era some 
service rendered to the slave I These, Mr. Chairman, 



/ 



^-^^ / THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



are 



.1 , _jiis why we take care that " the memory of 

+1,^ -1 shall rot." 
the wicke . , , , 

y.,.cvve claimed that the antlslavery cause has, from the 

first, be?n ably and dispassionately argued, every objection 

candidly examined^ and every difficulty or doubt anywhere 

honestly entertained treated with respect. Let me glance 

at the literature of the cause, ivjd try not so much, in a 

])rief hour, to prove this assertion, as to point out the 

sources from which any one may satisfy himself of its 

truth. 

I will begin with .certainly the ablest and perhaps the 
most honest statesman who has ever touched the slave 
question. Any one who will examine John Quincy 
Adams's speech on Texas, in 1838, will see that he was 
only seconding the full and able exposure of the Texas 
plot, prepared by Benjamin Lundy, to one of whose 
pamphlets Dr. Channing, in his " Letter to Henry Clay," 
has confessed his obligation. Every one acquainted with 
those years will allow that the North owes its earliest 
knowledge and first awakening on that subject to Mr. 
Lundy, who made long journeys and devoted years to 
the investigation. His labors have this attestation, that 
they quickened the zeal and strengthened the hands of 
such men as Adams and Channing. I have been told 
that Mr. Lundy prepared a brief for Mr. Adams, and 
fdrnlshed him the materials for his speech on Texas. 

Look next at the right of petition. Long before any 
member of Congress had opened his mouth in its defence, 
the Abolition presses and lecturers had examined and 
defended the limits of this right with profound historical 
research and eminent constitutional ability. So thor- 
oughly had the work been done, that all classes of the 
people had made up their minds about it long before 
any speaker of eminence had touched it in Congress, 
The politicians were little aware of this. When Mr. 



I'HE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. HI. 

Adams threw himself so gallantly into the breach, it h 
said he wrote anxiously home to know whether he would 
be supported in Massachusetts, little aware of the outburst 
of popular gratitude which the Northern breeze was even 
then bringing him, deep and cordial enough to wipe away 
the old grudge Massachusetts had borne him so long. 
Mr. Adams himself was only in favor of receiving the 
petitions, and advised to refuse their prayer, which was 
the abolition of slavery in the District. He doubted the 
power of Congress to abolish. His doubts were examined 
by Mr. William Goodell, in two letters of most acute 
logic, and of masterly ability. If Mr. Adams still re- 
tained his doubts, it is certain at least that he never 
expressed them afterward. When Mr. Clay paraded 
the same objections, the whole question of the poAver 
of Congress over the district was treated by Theodore 
D. Weld in the fullest manner, and with the widest 
research, — indeed, leaving nothing to be added : an ar- 
gument which Dr. Channing characterized as " demon- 
stration," and pronounced the essay " one of the ablest 
pamphlets from the American press." No answer was 
ever attempted. The best proof of its ability is, that 
no one since has presumed to doubt the power. Law- 
yers and statesmen have tacitly settled down into its 
full acknowledgment. 

The influence of the Colonization Society on the wel- 
fare of the colored race was the first question our move- 
ment encountered. To the close logic, eloquent appeals, 
and fully sustained charges of Mr. Garrison's Letters on 
that subject no answer was ever made. Judge Jay fol- 
lowed with a work full and able, establishing every charge 
by the most patient investigation of facts. It is not too 
much to say of these two volumes, that they left the Col- 
onization Society hopeless at the North. It dares never 
show its face before the people, and only lingers in some 



xlo THE PHirbSOPHY OF 

few nooks of sectarian pride, so secluded from the influ 
ence of present ideas as to be almost fossil in their cliar 
acter. 

The practical working of the slave system, the slave 
laws, the treatment of slaves, their food, the dm'ation of 
then* lives, their ignorance and moral condition, and the 
influence of Southern public opinion on their fate, have 
been spread out in a detail and with a fulness of evidence 
which no subject has ever received before in this country. 
Witness the works of Phelps, Bourne, Rankin, Grimke, the 
" Antislavery Record," and, above all, that encyclopaedia 
of facts and storehouse of arguments, the " Thousand Wit- 
nesses " of Mr. Theodore D. Weld. He also prepared 
that full and valuable tract for the World's Convention 
called " Slavery and the Internal Slave-Trade in the 
United States," published in London, 1841. Unique in 
antislavery literature is Mrs. Child's " Appeal," one of 
the ablest of our weapons, and one of the finest efforts 
of her rare genius. 

The Princeton Review, I believe, first challenged the 
Abolitionists to an investio-ation of the teachino-s of the 
Bible on slavery. Tliat field liad been somewhat broken 
by our English predecessors. But in England, the pro- 
slavery party had been soon shamed out of the attempt to 
drag the Bible into their service, and hence the discussion 
there had been short and somewhat superficial. The pro- 
slavery side of the question has been eagerly sustained 
by theological reviews and doctors of divinity without 
number, from the half-way and timid faltering of Way- 
land up to the unblushing and melancholy recklessness of 
Stuart. The argument on the other side has come wholly 
from the Abolitionists ; for neither Dr. Hague nor Dr. 
Barnes can be said to have added anything to the wide 
research, critical acumen, and comprehensive views of 
Theodore D. Weld, Beriah Green, J. G. Fee, and the 
old work of Duncan. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 119 

On the constitutional questions M^iich have at various 
times arisen, — the citizenship of the colored man, the 
soundness of the "Pricrg" decision, the constitutionahtj 
of the old Fugitive Slave Law, the true construction of 
the slave-surrender clause, — nothincr has been added, 
either in the way of fact or argument, to the works of 
Jay, Weld, Alvan Stewart, E. G. Loring, S. E. Sewall, 
Richard Plildreth, W. I. Bowditch, the masterly essays 
of the Emancipator at New York and the Liberator at 
Boston, and the various addresses of the Massachusetts 
and American Societies for the last twenty years. The 
id(^a of the antislavery character of the Constitution, — 
the opiate with Avhich Free Soil quiets its conscience for 
voting under a proslavery government, — I heard first 
suggested by Mr. Garrison in 1838. It was elaborately 
argued that year in all our antislavery gatherings, both 
here and in New York, and sustained with great ability 
by Alvan Stewart, and in part by T. D. Weld. The 
antislavery construction of the Constitution was ably 
argued in 183G, in the " Antislavery Magazine," by Rev. 
Samuel J. May, one of the very first to seek the side of 
Mr. Garrison, and pledge to the slave his life and efforts, — 
a pledge which thirty years of devoted labors have nobly 
redeemed. If it has either merit or truth, they are due 
to no legal learning recently added to our ranks, but to 
some of the old and well-known pioneers. This claim 
has since received the fullest investigation from Mr. Ly- 
sander Spooner, who has urged it with all his unrivalled 
ingenuity, laborious research, and close logic. He writes 
as a lawyer, and has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with 
any class of antislavery men. 

The influence of slavery on our government has re- 
ceived the profoundest philosophical investigation from 
the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his invaluable essay on 
"Despotism in America," — a work which deserves a 



120 THE PBreOSOPHY OF 

place by tlie side of the ablest political disquisitions of 
any age. 

Mrs. Chapman's survey of " Ten Years of Antislav'ery 
Experience," was the first attempt at a philosophical dis- 
cussion of the various aspects of the antislavery cause, and 
the problems raised by its struggles' with sect and party. 
You, Mr. Chairman, [Edmund Quincy, Esq.,] in the elab- 
orate Reports of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society 
for the last ten years, have followed in the same path, 
making to American literature a contribution of the high- 
est value, and in a department where you have few rivals 
and no superior. Whoever shall write the history eitjier 
of this movement, or any other attempted under a re- 
publican government, will find nowhere else so clear an 
insight and so full an acquaintance with the most difficult 
part of his subject. 

Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the ablest man, 
without doubt, of tlie Democratic party, and perhaps the 
ripest politician in New England, added little or nothing 
to the storehouse of antislavery argument. The grasp of 
his intellect and the fulness of his learning every one 
will acknowledge. He never trusted himself to speak on 
any subject till he had dug down to its primal granite. 
He laid a most generous contribution on the altar of the 
antislavery cause. His speeches on our question, too short 
and too few, are remarkable for their compact statement, 
iron logic, bold denunciation, and the wonderful light 
thrown back upon our history. Yet how little do they 
present which was not familiar for years in our antislavery 
meetincrs ! 

o 

Look, too, at the last great effjrt of the idol of so many 
thousands, Mr. Senator Sumner, — the discussion of a great 
national question, of which it has been said that we must 
go back to Webster's Reply to Hayne, and Fisher Ames 
on the Jay Treaty, to find its equal in Congress, — praise 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 121 

which we miglit perhaps quahfy, if any adequate report 
were left us of some of the noble orations of Adams. 
No one can be blind to the skilful use he has made of his 
materials, the consummate ability with which he has mar- 
shalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius has 
thrown over all. Yet, with the exception of his reference 
to the antislavery debate in Congress, in 1817, there is 
hardly a train of thought or argument, and no single fact 
in the whole speech, which has not been familiar in our 
meetings and essays for the last ten years. 

""Before leaving the halls of Congress, I have great pleas- 
ure in recognizing one exception to my remarks, Mr. Gid- 
dings. Pei-^iaps he is no real exception, since it would not 
be difficult to establish his claim to be considered one of 
the original Abolition party. But whether he would 
choose to be so considered or not, it is certainly true that 
his long presence at the seat of government, his whole- 
souled devotedness, his sagacity and unwearied industry, 
have made him a large contributor to our antislavery 
resources. 

The relations of the American Church to slavery, and 
the duties of private Christians, — the whole casuistry of 
this portion of the question, so momentous among descend- 
ants of the Puritans, — have been discussed with great 
acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison, 
Goodell, Gerritt Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have 
never attempted to judge the American Church by any 
standard except that which she has herself laid down, — 
never claimed that she should be perfect, but have con- 
tented themselves by demanding that she should be con- 
sistent. They have never judged her except out of her 
own mouth, and on facts asserted by her own presses and 
leaders. The sundering of the Methodist and Baptist de- 
nominations, and the univn^sal amtation of the relimous 
world, are the best proof ol the sagacity with which their 



122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

measures have been chosen, the cogent arguments they 
have used, and the indisputable .facts on which their 
criticisms have been founded. 

In nothing have tlie AboHtionists shown more sagacity 
or more thorough knowledge of their countrymen than in 
the course they have pursued in relation to the Church. 
None but a New-Englander can appreciate the power 
which church organizations wield over all who share the 
blood of the Puritans. The influence of each sect over its 
own members is overwhelming, often shutting out, or con- 
trolling, all other influences. We have Popes here, all 
the more dangerous because no triple crown puts you on 
your guard. The Methodist priesthood brings the Cath- 
olic very vividly to mind. That each local church is in- 
dependent of all others, we have been somewhat careful to 
assert, in theory and practice. The individual's indepen- 
dence of all organizations which place themselves between 
him and his God, some few bold minds have asserted in 
theory, but most even of those have stopped there. 

In such a land, the Abolitionists early saw, that, for a 
moral question like theirs, only two paths lay open : to 
work through the Church, — that failing, to join battle 
with it. Some tried long, like Luther, to be Protestants, 
and yet not come out of Catholicism ; but their eyes were 
soon opened. Since then we have been convinced that, 
to come out from the Church, to hold her up as the bul- 
wark of slavery, and to make her sliortcomings the main 
burden of our appeals to the religious sentiment of the 
community, was our first duty and best policy. This 
course alienated many friends, and was a subject of fre- 
quent rebuke from such men as Dr. Channing. But 
nothing has ever more strengthened the cause, or won it 
more influence ; and it has had the healthiest effect on the 
Church itself. British Christians have always sanctioned 
it, whenever the case has been fairly presented to tliem. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 123 

Mr. John Quincy Adams, a man far better acq^uainted 
witli liis own times than Dr. Channing, recognized thv3 
soundness of our policy. I do not know tliat he ever 
uttered a word in pubhc on the delinquency of the 
churches ; but he is said to have assured his son, at the 
time the Methodist Church broke asunder, that other 
men might be more startled by the eclat of political suc- 
cess, but nothing, in his opinion, promised more good, or 
showed more clearly the real strength of the antislavery 
movement, than that momentous event.* 

In 1838, the British Emancipation in the West Indies 
opened a rich field for observation, and a full harvest of 
important facts. TJie Abolitionists, not Avilling to wait 
for the official reports of the government, sent special 
agents through those islands, whose reports they scattered, 
at great expense and by great exertion, broadcast through 
the land. This was at a time when no newspaper in the 
country would either lend or sell them the aid of its 
columns to enlighten the nation on an experiment so 
vitally important to us. And even now, hardly a press 
in the country cares or dares to bestow a line or com- 
municate a fact toward the history of that remarkable 
revolution. The columns of the Antislavery Standard, 
Pennsylvania Freeman, and Ohio Bugle have been for 
years full of all that a thorough and patient advocacy 
of our cause demands. And the eloquent lips of many 
whom I see around me, and whom I need not name 
here, have done their share toward pressing all these 
topics on public attention. There is liardly any record 
of these labors of the living voice. Indeed, from the 
nature of the case, there cannot be any adequate one. 
Yet, unable to command a wide circulation for our 

* Henry Clay attaclied the same importance to tlie ecclesiastical inflnenca 
and divisions. See his " Interview with Rev. Dr. Hill, of Louisville, Ky./' 
Aniialavery Standard, July 14, 1860 



124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

books and journals, we have been obliged to bring our- 
selves into close contact with the people, and to rely 
mainly on public addresses. These have been our most 
efficient instrumentality. For proof that these addresses 
have been full of pertinent facts, sound sense, and able 
arguments, we must necessarily point to results, and 
demand to be tried by our fruits. Within these last 
twenty years it has been very rare that any fact stated 
by your lecturers has been disproved, or any statement of 
theirs successfully impeacheVl. And for evidence, of the 
soundness, simplicity, and pertinency of tlieir arguments 
we can only claim that our converts and co-laborers 
throughout the land have at least the reputation of 
being specially able " to give a reason for the faith that 
is in them." 

I remember that when, in 1845, the present leaders of 
the Free Soil party, with Daniel Webster in their com- 
pany, met to draw up the Anti-Texas Address of the 
Massachusetts Convention, they sent to Abolitionists for 
antislavery facts and history, for the remarkable testi- 
monies of our Revolutionary great men which they 
wished to quote. [Hear ! hear !] When, many years 
aero, the Lep'islatm'e of Massachusetts wished to send to 
Congress a resolution affirming the duty of immediate 
emancipation, the committee sent to William Lloyd Gar- 
rison to draw it up, and it stands now on our statute-book 
as he drafted it. 

How vigilantly, how patiently, did we watch the Texas 
plot from its commencement ! The politic South felt that 
its first move had been too bold, and thenceforward 
worked underground. For many a year, men laughed 
at us for entertaining any apprehensions. It was impos- 
sible to rouse the North to its peril. David Lee Child 
was thought crazy, because he would not believe there 
was no danger. His elaborate "Letters on Texan An- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 125 

nexation' are the ablest and most valuable contribution 
that has b^3n made towards a history of the whole plot. 
Though we foresaw and proclaimed our conviction that 
annexation would be, in the end, a fatal step for the 
South, we did not feel at liberty to relax our opposition, 
wel] knowing the vast increase of strength it would give, 
at first, to the Slave Power. I remember bein^ one of 
a committee which waited on Abbott Lawrence, a yeai 
or so only before annexation, to ask his countenance to 
some general movement, without distinction of party, 
against the Texas scheme. He smiled at our fears, 
begged us to have no apprehensions ; stating that his cor- 
respondence with leading men at Washington enabled him 
to assure us annexation was impossible, and that the 
South itself was determined to defeat the project. A 
short time after. Senators and Representatives from Texas 
took their seats in Congress ! 

Many of these services to the slave were done before I 
joined his cause. In thus referring to them, do not sup- 
pose me merely seeking occasion of eulogy on my prede- 
cessors and present co-laborers. I recall these things only 
to rebut the contemptuous criticism which some about us 
make the excuse for their past neglect of tlie movement, 
and in answer to " Ion's " representation of our course as 
reckless fanaticism, cliildish impatience, utter lack of good 
sense, and of our meetings as scenes oidy of excitement, 
of reckless and indiscriminate denunciation. I assert that 
every social, moral, economical, religious, political, and 
historical aspect of the question has been ably and pa- 
tiently examined. And all this has been done with an 
industry and ability which have left little for the profes- 
sional skill, scholarly culture, and historical learning of the 
new laborers to accompHsh. If the people are still in 
doubt, it is from the inherent difficulty of the subject, or a 
hatred of light, not from want of it. 



126 THEPHILOSOPHY OF 

So far from the antislavery cause having lacked a manly 
and able discussion, I think it will be acknowledged here- 
after that this discussion has been one of the noblest con- 
tributions to a literature really American. Heretofore, 
not only has our tone been but an echo of foreign culture, 
but the very topics discussed and the views maintained 
h.'vve been too often pale reflections of European politics 
and European philosophy. No matter what dress we 
assumed, the voice was ever '' the voice of Jacob." At 
last we have stii-red a question thoroughly American ; the 
subject has been looked at from a point of ^dew entirely 
American ; and it is of such deep interest, that it has 
called out all the intellectual strength of the nation. For 
once, the nation speaks its own thoughts, in its own 
language, and the tone also is all its own. It will hardly 
do for the defeated party to claim that, in this discussion, 
all the ability is on their side. 

We are charged with lacking foresight, and said to 
exairixerate. This charo;e of exao-o-eration brino;s to my 
mind a fact I mentioned, last month, at Horticultural 
Hall. The theatres in many of our large cities bring out, 
night after night, all the radical doctrines and all the 
startling scenes of " Uncle Tom." They preach imme- 
diate emancipation, and slaves slioot their hunters to loud 
applause. Two years ago, sitting in this hall, I was 
myself somewhat startled by the assertion of my friend, 
Mr. Pillsbury, that the theatres would recelA^e the gospel 
of antislavery trutli earlier than the churches. A hiss 
went up from the galleries, and many in the audience 
were shocked by the remark. I asked myself whether I 
could indorse such a statement, aifd felt that I could not. 
I could not believe it to be true. Only two years have 
passed, and what was then deemed rant and fanaticism, 
by seven out of ten who heard it, has proved time. The 
theatre, bowing to its audience, has preached immediate 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 127 

emancipation, and given us the whole of " Uncle Tom " ; 
while the pulpit is either silent or hostile, and in the 
columns of the theological papers the work is subjected to 
criticism, to reproach, and its autlior to severe rebuke. 
Do not, therefore, friends, set down as extravagant every 
statem^ent which your experience does not warrant. It 
may be that you and I have not studied the signs of the 
times quite as accurately as the speaker. Going up and 
down the land, coming into close contact with the feelings 
and prejudices of the community, he is sometimes a better 
judge than you are of its present state. An Abolitionist 
has more motives for watchino; and more means of findino; 
out the true state of public opinion, than most of those 
careless critics who jeer at his assertions to-day, and are 
the first to cry, " Just what / said," when his prophecy 
becomes fact to-morrow. 

Mr. " Ion " thinks, also, that we have thrown away 
opportunities, and needlessly outraged the men and par- 
ties about us. Far from it. The antislavery movement 
was a patient and humble suppliant at every door whence 
any help could possibly be hoped. If we now repudiate 
and denounce some of our institutions, it is because we 
have faithfully tried them, and found them deaf to the 
claims of justice and humanity. Our great Leader, when 
he first meditated this crusade, did not 

" At once, like a sunburst, his banner unfurl.'* 
O no I he sounded his way Avarily forward. Brought up 
in the strictest reverence for church organizations, his first 
effort was to enlist the clergymen of Boston in the support 
of his views. On their aid he counted confidently in his 
effort to preach immediate repentance of all sin. He did 
not go, with malice jorepense^ as some seem to imagine, iip 
to that " attic " where Mayor Otis with difficulty found 
him. He did not court hostility or seek exile. He 
did not sedulously endeavor to cut himself off froni 



128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

the sympathy and countenance of the community about 
him. O no ! A fervid disciple of the American Church, 
he conferred witli some of the leading clergy of the 
city, and laid before them his convictions on the sub- 
ject of slavery.* He painted their responsibility, and 
tried to induce them to take from his shoulders the bur- 
den of so mighty a movement. He laid himself at their 
feet. He recognized the colossal strength of the Clergy ; 
he knew that against their opposition it would be almost 
desperate to attempt to relieve the slave. He entreated 
them, therefore, to take up the cause. But the Clergy 
turned away from him ! They shut their doors upon him ! 
They bade him compromise his convictions, — smother 
one half of them, and support the colonization movement, 
making his own auxiliary to that, or they would have none 
of him. Like Luther, he said : " Here I stand ; God 
help me ; I can do nothing else ! " But the men who 
joined him were not persuaded that the case was so 
desperate. They returned, each to his own local sect, 
and remained in them until some of us, myself among the 
number, — later converts to the antislavery movement, — 
thought they were slow and faltering in their obedience 
to conscience, and that they ought to have cut loose 

* "The writer accompanied IMr. Garrison, in 1829, in calling upon a 
number of prominent ministers in Boston, to secure their co-operation in 
this cause. Our expectations of important assistance from them were, at t/tat 
time, very sanguine." — Testimony of William Goodell, in a recent work 
entitled " Slavery and Antislavery." 

In an address on Slavery and Colonization, delivered by Mr. Garrison 
in the Park Street Cimrch, Boston, July 4, 1829, (which was subsequently 
published in the National Philanthropist,) he said : " I call on the ambas- 
sadors of Christ, everywhere, to make kno^vn this proclamation, ' Thus 
Baith the Lord God of the Africans, Let this people go, that they may 
serve me.' I ask them to ' proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening 
of the prison to them that are bound.' I call on the churches of the living 
God to LEAD in this great enterprise." 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 129 

much sooner than they did. But a patience, which old 
sympathies would not allow to be exhausted, and associa- 
tions, planted deeply in youth, and spreading over a large 
part of manhood, were too strong for any mere argument 
to dislodge them. So they still persisted in remaining in 
the Church. Their zeal was so fervent, and their labors 
so abundant, that in some towns large societies were 
formed, led by most of the clergymen, and having almost 
all the church-members on their lists. In those same 
towns now you will not find one single Abolitionist, of 
any stamp whatever. They excuse their falling back by 
alleging that we have injured the cause by our extrava- 
gance and denunciation, and by the various other ques- 
tions with which our names are associated. This might 
be a good reason why they should not work with us, but 
does it excuse their not working at all? These people 
have been once awakened, thoroughly instructed in the 
momentous character of the movement, and have acknowl- 
edged the rightful claim of the slave on their sympathy 
and exertions. It is not possible that a few thousand per- 
sons, however extravagant, could prevent devoted men 
from finding some way to help such a cause, or at least 
manifesting their interest in it. But they have not only 
left us, they have utterly deserted the slave, in the hour 
when the interests of their sects came across his cause. 
Is it uncharitable to conjecture the reason ? At the early 
period, however, to which I have referred, the Church 
was much exercised by the persistency of the Abolitionists 
Li not going out from her. When I joined the antislavery 
ranks, sixteen years ago, the voice of the clergy was : 
" Will these pests never leave us ? Will they still remain 
to trouble us ? If you do not like us, there is the door ! " 
When our friends had exhausted all entreaty, and tested 
the Christianity of that body, they shook off the dust of 
their feet, and came out of her. 





180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

At the outset, Mr. Garrison called on the head of the 
Orthodox denomination, — a man compared with whose 
influence on the mind of New England that of the states- 
man whose death you have just mourned was, I think, 
but as dust in the balance, — a man who then held the 
Orthodoxy of Boston in his right hand, and who has since 
taken up the West by its four corners, and given it so 
largely to Puritanism, — I mean the Rev. Dr. Lyman 
Beecher. Mr. Garrison was one of those who bowed to 
the spell of that matchless eloquence which then fulmined 
over our Zion. He waited on his favorite diAane, and 
urged him to g-ive to the new movement the incalculable 
aid of his name and countenance. He was patiently 
heard. He Avas allowed to unfold his plans and array his 
facts. The reply of the veteran was, " Mr. Garrison, I 
have too many irons in the fire to put in another." My 
friend said, '' Doctor, you had better take them all out and 
put this one in, if you mean well either to the religion or 
to the civil liberty of our country." [Cheers.] 

The great Orthodox leader did not rest with merely 
refusing to put another iron in his fire ;. he attempted to 
limit the irons of other men. As President of Lane 
Theological Seminary, he endeavored to prevent the stu- 
dents from investigating the subject of slavery. The 
result, we all remember, was a strenuous resistance on 
the part of a large number of the students, led by that re- 
markable man, Theodore D. Weld. The right triumphed, 
and Lane Seminary lost her character and noblest pupils 
at the same time. She has languished ever since, even 
with such a President. Why should I follow Dr. Beecher 
into those ecclesiastical conventions where he has been 
tried, and found wanting, in fidelity to the slave ? He 
has done no worse, indeed he has done much better, than 
most of his class. His opposition has always been open 
and manly. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 131 

' But, Mr. Chairman, there is something in the blood 
which, men tell us, brings out virtues and defects, even 
when they have lain dormant for a generation. Good and 
evil qualities are hereditary, the physicians say. The 
blood whose warm currents of eloquent aid my friend so- 
licited in vain in that generation has sprung voluntarily 
t ) his assistance in the next, — both from the pulpit 
and the press, — to rouse the world by the vigor and 
pathos of its appeals. [Enthusiastic cheers.] Even on 
that great triumph I would say a word. Marked and un 
equalled as has been that success, remember, in explana- 
tion of the phenomenon, — for " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is 
rather an event than a book, — remember this : if the old 
antislavery movement had not roused the sympathies of 
Mrs. Stowe, the book had never been written ; if that 
movement had not raised up hundreds of thousands of 
hearts to sympathize with the slave, the book had never 
been read. [Cheers.] Not that the genius of the author 
has not made the triumph all her own ; not that the unri- 
valled felicity of its execution has not trebled, quadrupled, 
increased tenfold, if you please, the number of readers ; 
but there must be a spot even for Archimedes to rest his 
lever upon, before he can move the world, [cheers,] and 
this effort of genius, consecrated to the noblest purpose, 
might have fallen dead and unnoticed in 1835. It is -the 
antislavery movement which has changed 1835 to 1852. 
Those of us famihar with antislavery literature know 
well that Richard Hildreth's " Archy Moore," now " The 
White Slave," was a book of eminent ability ; that it 
owed its want of success to no lack of genius, but only to 
the fact that it was a work born out of due time ; that the 
antislavery cause had not then aroused sufficient num- 
bers, on the wings of whose enthusiasm even the most 
delightful fiction could have risen into world-wide influ- 
ence and repute. To the cause which had changed 1835 



132 Tffl^HILOSOPHY OF 

to 1852 is due somewliat of tlie influence of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." 

The Abolitionists have never overlooked the wonderful 
power which the wand of the novelist was yet to wield in 
their behalf over the hearts of the world. Fredrika Bre- 
mer only expressed the common sentiment of many of 
us, when she declared that " the fate of the negro is the 
romance of our history." Agam and again, from my ear- 
liest knowledge of the cause, have I heard the opinion, 
that in the debatable land between Freedom and Slavery, 
in the thrilling incidents of the escape and sufferings of 
the fugitive, and the perils of liis friends, the future Wal- 
ter Scott of America would find the " border-land " of 
his romance, and the most touching incidents of his "sixty 
years since " ; and that the literature of America would 
gather its freshest laurels from that field. 

So much, Mr. Chairman, for our treatment of the 
Church. We clung to it as long as we hoped to make it 
useful. Disappointed in that, we have tried to expose its 
paltering and hypocrisy on this question, broadly and with 
unflinching boldness, in hopes to purify and bring it to our 
aid. Our labors Avith the great religious societies, with 
the press, with the institutions of learning, have been as 
untiring, and almost as unsuccessful. We have tried to 
do our duty to every public question that has* arisen, which 
could be made serviceable in rousing; general attention. 
The Right of Petition, the Power of Congress, the Inter- 
nal Slave-Trade, Texas, the Compromise Measures, the 
Fugitive Slave Law, the motions of leading men, the 
tactics of parties, have all been watched and used with 
sagacity and effect as means to produce a change in pubHc 
opinion. Dr. Channing has thanked the AboHtlon party, 
in the name of all the lovers of fi'ee thought and free 
speech, for having vindicated that right, when all others 
seemed ready to surrender it, — vindicated it at the cost 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 133 

of reputation, ease, property, even life itself. The only 
blood that has ever been shed, on this side the ocean, in 
defence of the freedom of the press, was the blood of 
Lovejoy, one of their number. In December, 1836, Dr. 
Channing spoke of their position in these terms : — 

" Whilst, in obedience to conscience, they have refrained from 
opposing force to force, they have still persevered, amidst menace 
and insult, in bearing their testimony against wrong, in giving 
utterance to their deep convictions. Of such men, I do not hes- 
itate to say, that they have rendered to freedorn a more essential 
service than any body of men among us. The defenders of 
freedom ai'C not those who claim and exercise rights which no 
one assails, or who win shouts of applause by well-turned com- 
pliments to Liberty in the days of her triumph. They are those 
who stand up for rights which mobs, conspiracies, or single 
tyrants put in jeopardy ; who contend for liberty in that particu- 
lar form which is tlueatened at the moment by the many or the 
few. To the Abolitionists this honor belongs. The first sys- 
tematic effort to strip the citizen of freedom of speech they have 
met with invincible resolution. From my heart I thank them. 
I am myself their debtor. I am not sure that I should tliis mo- 
ment write in safety, had they shrunk from the conflict, had they 
shut their lips, imposed silence on theu- presses, and hid them- 
selves before their ferocious assailants. I know not where these 
outrages would have stopped, had they not met resistance from 
their first destined victims. The newspaper press, with a few 
exceptions, uttered no genuine indignant rebuke of the wrong- 
doers, but rather countenanced by its gentle censures the reign 
of force. The mass of the people looked supinely on this new 
tyranny, under which a portion of their fellow-citizens seemed to 
be sinking. A tone of denunciation was beginning to proscribe 
all discussion of slavery ; and had the spirit of violence, which 
selected associations as its first objects, succeeded in this prepar- 
atory enterprise, it might have been easily turned against any 
and every individual, who might presume to agitate the unwel- 
come subject. It is hard to say to what outrage the fettered 
press of the counlry might not have been reconciled. I thank 



13^4 TH^BILOSOPHY OF 

the Abolitionists that, in this evil day, they were true to the 
rights which the multitude were ready to betray. Their pur- 
pose to suffer, to die, rather than surrender their dearest liberties, 
taught the lawless that they had a foe to contend with whom it 
was not safe to press, whilst, like all manly appeals, it called 
forth reflection and sympathy in the better portion of the 
community. In the name of freedom and humanity, I thank 
them." 

No one, Mr. Chairman, deserves more of that honor 
than he whose chair you now occupy. Our youthful city 
can boast of but few places of historic renown ; but I 
know of no one which coming time is more likely to keep 
in memory than the roof which Francis Jackson offered 
to the antislavery women of Boston, when Mayor Lyman 
confessed he was unable to protect their meeting, and 
when the only protection the laws could afford Mr. Garri- 
son was the shelter of the common jail. 

Sir, when a nation sets itself to do evil, and all its lead- 
ing forces, wealth, party, and piety, join in the career, it 
is impossible but that those who offer a constant opposi- 
tion should be hated and maligned, no matter how wise, 
cautious, and well planned their course may be. We are 
peculiar sufferers in tliis way. The community has come 
to hate its reproving Nathan so bitterly, that even those 
whom the relenting part of it is beginning to regard as 
standard-bearers of the antislavery host think it unwise 
to avow any connection or sympathy with him. I refer 
to some of the leaders of the political movement against 
slavery. They feel it to l)e their mission to marshal and 
use as effectively as possible the present convictions of the 
people. They cannot aflbrd to encumber themselves with 
the odium which twenty years of angry agitation have 
engendered in great sects sore from unsparing rebuke, 
parties galled by constant defeat, and leading men pro- 
voked by unexpected exposure. They are willing to con- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 136 

fess, privately, that our movement produced theirs, and 
that its continued existence is the very breath of their 
Hfe. But, at the same time, they would fain walk on the 
road without being soiled by too close contact with the 
rough pioneers who threw it up. They are wise and hon- 
orable, and their silence is very expressive. 

When I speak of their eminent position and acknowl- 
edged ability, another thought strikes me. Who con- 
verted these men and their distinguished associates ? It 
is said we have shown neither sagacity in plans, nor 
candor in discussion, nor ability. Who, then, or what, 
converted Burlingame and Wilson, Sumner and Adams, 
Palfrey and Mann, Chase and Hale, and Phillips and 
Giddings ? Who taught the Christian Register, the Daily 
Advertiser, and that class of prints, that there were such 
things as a slave and a slaveholder in the land, and so 
gave them some more intelligent basis than their mere 
instincts to hate Wilham Lloyd Garrison ? [Shouts and 
laughter.] What magic wand was it whose touch made 
the toadying servility of the land start up the real demon 
that it was, and at the same time gathered into the slave's 
service the professional ability, ripe culture, and personal 
integrity which grace the Free Soil ranks ? We never 
argue ! These men, then, were converted by simple 
denunciation ! They were all converted by the " hot," 
" reckless," " ranting," " bigoted," " fanatic " Garrison, 
who never troubled himself about facts, nor stopped to 
argue with an opponent, but straightway knocked him 
down ! [Roars of laughter and cheers.] My old and 
valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often boasts that he was a 
reader of the Liberator before I was. Do not criticise 
too much the agency by which such men were converted. 
That blade has a double edge. Our reckless course, our 
empty rant, our fanaticism, has made Abolitionists of some 
of the best and ablest men in the land. We are inclined 



136 THE^IILOSOPHY OF 

to go on, and see if even with such poor tools we cannot 
make some more. [Enthusiastic applause.] Antislavery 
zeal and the roused conscience of the "godless come- 
outers " made the trembling South demand the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and the Fugitive Slave Law "provoked" 
Mrs. Stowe to the good work of " Uncle Tom." That is 
something ! [Cheers.] _Let me say, in passing, that you 
will nowhere find an earlier or more generous apprecia- 
tion, or more flowing eulogy, of these men and their 
labors, than in the columns of the Liberator. No one, 
however feeble, has ever peeped or muttered, in any quar- 
ter, that the vigilant eye of the Pioneer has not recog- 
nized him. He has stretched out the right hand of a 
most cordial welcome the moment any man's face was 
tui'ned Zionwai'd. [Loud cheers.] 

I do not mention these things to praise Mr. Garrison , 
I do not stand here for that purpose. You will not deny 
— if you do, I can prove it — that the movement of the 
Abolitionists converted these men. Their constituents 
were converted by it. The assault upon the right of 
petition, upon the right to print and speak of slavery, the 
denial of the right of Congress over the District, the 
annexation of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Law, were meas- 
ures which the antislavery movement provoked, and the 
discussion of which has made all the Abolitionists we 
have. The antislavery cause, then, converted these men ; 
it gave them a constituency ; it gave them an opportunity 
to speak, and it gave them a public to listen. The anti- 
slavery cause gave them their votes, got them their 
oflSces, furnished them their facts, gave them their audi- 
ence. If you tell me they cherished all these principles 
in their own breasts before Mr. Garrison appeared, I can 
only say, if the antislavery movement did not give them 
their ideas, it surely gave the courage to utter them. 

In such circumstances, is it not singular that the name 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 137 

of William Lloyd Garrison has never been pronounced on 
the floor of the United States Congress linked with any 
epithet but that of contempt ! No one of those men who 
owe their ideas, their station, their audience, to him, have 
ever thouo;ht it worth their while to utter one word in 
grateful recognition of the power which called them into 
being. When obliged, by the course of their argument, to 
treat the question historically, they can go across the water 
to Clarkson and Wilberforce, — yes, to a safe salt-water 
distance. [Laughter.] As Daniel Webster, Avhen he was 
talking to the farmers of Western New York, and wished 
to contrast slave labor and free labor, did not dare to com- 
pare New York with Virginia, — sister States, under the 
same government, planted by the same race, worshipping 
at the same altar, speaking the same language, — identi- 
cal in all respects, save that one in which he wished to 
seek the contrast ; but no ; he compared it with Cuba, — 
[cheers and laughter,] — the contrast was so close ! [Re- 
newed cheers.] Catholic — Protestant ; Spanish — Sax- 
on ; despotism — municipal institutions ; readers of Lope 
de Vega and of Shakespeare ; mutterers of the Mass — 
children of the Bible ! But Virginia is too near home ! 
So is Garrison ! One would have thouo;ht there was 
something in the human breast which would sometimes 
break through policy. These noble-hearted men whom I 
have named must surely have found quite irksome the 
constant practice of what Dr. Gardiner used to call " that 
despicable virtue, prudence " ! [Laughter.] One would 
have thought, when they heard that name spoken with 
contempt, then' ready eloquence would have leaped from 
its scabbard to avenge even a word that threatened him 
with insult. But it never came, — never ! [Sensation.] 
I do not say I blame them. Perhaps they thought they 
should serve the cause better by drawing a broad black 
line between themselves and him. Perhaps they thought 



138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

the Devil could be cheated ; — I do not think he can. 
[Laughter and cheers.] 

"We are perfectly willing — I am, for one — to be the 
dead lumber that shall make a path for these men into the 
light and love of the people. We hope for nothing better. 
Use us freely, in any way, for the slave. When the tem- 
ple is finished, the tools will not complain that they are 
thrown aside, let who will lead up the nation to '' put on 
the topstone with shoutings." But while so much re- 
mains to be done, while our little camp is beleaguered all 
about, do nothing to weaken his influence, whose sagacity, 
more than any other single man's, has led us up hither, 
and whose name is identified with that movement which 
the North still heeds, and the South still fears the most. 
After all, Mr. Chairman, this is no hard task. We know 
very well, that, notwithstanding this loud clamor about 
our harsh judgment of men and things, our opinions differ 
very little from those of our Free Soil friends, or of intelr 
ligent men generally, Avhen you really get at them. It 
has even been said, that one of that family which has 
made itself so infamously conspicuous here in executing 
the Fugitive Slave Law, a judge, whose earnest defence 
of that law we all heard in Faneuil Hall, did himself, but 
a little while before, arrange for a fugitive to be hid till 
pursuit was over. I hope it is true, — it would be an 
honorable inconsistency. And if it be not true of him, 
we know it is of others. Yet it is base to incite others to 
deeds, at which, whenever we are hidden from public 
notice, our own hearts recoil ! But thus we see that 
when men lay aside the judicial ermine, the senator's 
robe, or the party collar, and sit down in private life, you 
can hardly distinguish their tones from ours. Their eyeg 
seem as anointed as our own. As in Pope's day, — 

" At all we laugh they laugh, no doubt ; 
The only ditierence is, we dare laugh out." 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 189 

Caution is not always good policy in a cause like ours. 
It is said that, when Napoleon saw the day going against 
him, he used to throw away all the rules of war, and 
trust himself to the hot impetuosity of his soldiers. The 
masses are governed more by impulse than conviction ; 
and even were it not so, the convictions of most men are 
on our side, and this will surely appear, if we can only 
pierce the crust of their prejudice or indiiference. I ob- 
serve that our Free Soil friends never stir their audience 
so deeply as when some individual leaps beyond the plat- 
form, and strikes upon the very heart of the people. Men 
listen to discussions of laws and tactics with ominous pa- 
tience. It is when Mr. Sumner, in'Faneuil Hall, avows 
his determination to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law, and 
cries out, " I was a man before I was a Commissioner," — 
when Mr. Giddings says of the fall of slavery, quoting 
Adams, '' Let it come ; if it must come in bloody yet I say 
let it come ! " — that their associates on the platform are 
sure they are wrecking the party, — while many a heart 
beneath beats its first pulse of antislavery hfe. 

These are brave words. When I compare them with 
the general tone of Free Soil men in Congress, I distrust 
the atmosphere of Washington and of politics. These 
men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by 
many a cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. 
Sumner's speech in the Senate unsays no part of his 
Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though discussing the same 
topic, no one would gather from any word or argument 
that the speaker qyqy took such ground as he did in 
Faneuil Hall. It is all through, the laio^ the manner of 
the surrender, not the surrender itself, of the slave, that 
he objects to. As my friend Mr. Pillsbury so forcibly 
says, so far as anything in the speech shows, he puts the 
slave behind the jury trial, behind the habeas corpus act, 
and behind the new interpretation of the Constitution, and 



140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

says to tlie slave claimant : " You must get through all 
these, before you reach him ; but if you can get through 
all these, you may have him ! " It was no tone like this 
which made the old Hall rock ! Not if he got through 
twelve jury trials, and forty habeas corpus acts, and con- 
stitutions built high as yonder monument, would he per- 
mit so much as the shadow of a little finger of the slave 
claimant to touch the slave ! [Loud a2:)plause.] At least, 
so he was understood. In an elaborate discussion, by the 
leader of the political antislavery party, of the whole 
topic of fugitive slaves, you do not find one protest against 
the surrender itself, one frank expression on the con- 
stitutional clause, or any indication of the speaker's final 
purpose, should any one be properly claimed under that 
provision. It was under no such uncertain trumpet that 
the antislavery host was originally marshalled. The tone 
is that of the German soldiers whom Napoleon routed. 
They did not care, they said, for the defeat, but only that 
they were not beaten according to rule. [Laughter and 
cheers.] Mr. Mann, in his speech of February 15, 1850, 
says : '' Tlie States being separated, I would as soon re- 
turn my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would 
return a fugitive slave. Before God, and Christ, and all 
Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters." What 
a condition ! from the lips, too, of a champion of the 
Higher Law ! Whether the States be separate or united, 
neither my brother nor any other man's brother shall, with 
my consent, go back to bondage. [Enthusiastic cheers.] 
So speaks the heart, • — Mr. Mann's version is that of the 
politician. 

Mr. Mann's recent speech in August, 1852, has the 
same non-committal tone to which I have alluded in Mr. 
Sumner's. While professing, in the most eloquent terms, 
his loyalty to the Higher Law, Mr. Sutherland asked : 
" Is there, in Mr. Mann's opinion, any conflict between 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 141 

that Higher Law and the Constitution ? If so, what is 
it ? If not so, why introduce an irrelevant topic into the 
debate ? " Mr. Mann avoided any reply, and asked not 
to be interrupted ! Is that the frankness which becomes 
an Abolitionist ? Can such concealment help any cause ? 
The design of Mr. Sutherland is evident. If Mr. Mann 
had allowed there was no conflict between the Higher 
Law and the Constitution, all his remarks were futile and 
out of order. But if he asserted that any such conflict 
existed, how did he justify himself ui swearing to support 
that instrument ? — a question om* Free Soil friends are 
slow to meet. Mr. Mann saw the dilemma, and avoided 
it by silence ! 

The same speech contains the usual deprecatory asser- 
tions that Free-S oilers have no wish to interfere with 
slavery in the States ; that they " consent to let slavery 
remain where it is." If he means that he, Horace Mann, 
a moral and accountable being, " consents to let slavery 
remain where it is," all the rest of his speech is sound and 
fury, signifying nothing. If he means that he, Horace 
Mann, as a politician and party man, consents to that, but, 
elsewhere and otherwise, will do his best to abolish this 
" all-comprehending wickedness of slavery, in w^hich every 
wrong and every crime has its natural home," then he 
should have plainly said so. Otherwise, his disclaimer is 
unworthy of him, and could have deceived no one. He 
must have known that all the South care for is the action, 
not in what capacity the deed is done. 

Mr. Giddings is more careful in his statement ; but, 
judged by his speech on the " Platforms," how little does 
he seem to understand either his own duty or the true 
philosophy of the cause he serves ! He says : — 

" We, Sir, would drive the slave question from discussion in 
this hall. It never had a constitutional existence here. Sep- 
arate this government from all interference with slavery; let 



142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

the Federal poorer wash its hands from that institution ; let us 
purify ourselves from its contagion ; leare it -with the States, 
who alone have the power to sustain it, — tlien, Sir, ^\^11 agita- 
tion cease in regard to it here ; then we shall have notliing more 
to do with it ; our time will be no more occupied with it ; and, 
like a band of freemen, a band of brothers, we coukl meet here, 
and legislate for tlie prosperity, the improvement of mankind, 
for the elevation of our race." 

Mr. Sumner speaks in the same strain. He says : — 

" The time will come when courts or Congress \v\\\ declare, 
that nowhere mider the Constitution can man hold property in 
man. For the republic, such a decree will be the way of peace 
and safety. As slavery is banished from the national jurisdic- 
tion, it wiU cease to vex our national politics. It may linger in 
the States as a local institution, but it will no longer endanger 
national animosities when it no longer demands national sup- 
port For himself, he knows no better aim under the 

Constitution than to bring the government back to the precise 
position which it occupied " wlien it was launched. 

This seems to me a very mistaken strain. Whenever 
slavery is banished from our national jurisdiction, it will 
be a momentous gain, a vast stride. But let us not mis- 
take the half-way house for the end of the journey. I 
need not say that it matters not to Abolitionists under 
what special law slavery exists. Their battle lasts wdiile 
it exists anywhere, and I doubt not Mr. Sumner and Mr. 
Giddings feel themselves enlisted for the whole war. I 
Avill even suppose, wdiat neither of these gentlemen states, 
that their plan includes, not only that slavery shall be 
abolished in the District and Territories, but that the slave 
basis of representation shall be struck from the Constitu- 
tion, and the slave-surrender clause construed away. But 
even then, does Mr. Giddings or Mr. Sumner really be- 
lieve that slavery, existing in its full force in the States, 
" will cease to vex our national politics *' ? Can they 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 143 

point to any State where a powerful oligarchy, possessed 
of immense wealtli, has ever existed, without attempting to 
meddle in the government ? Even now, does not manufac- 
turing, banking, and commercial capital perpetually vex 
our politics ? Why should not slave capital exert the 
same influence ? Do they imagine that a hundred thou- 
sand men, possessed of two tliousand millions of dollars, 
which they feel the spirit of the age is seeking to tear 
from their grasp, will not eagerly catch at all the support 
they can obtain by getting the control of the govern- 
ment? In a land where* the dollar is almighty, "where 
the sin of not being rich is only atoned for by the effort 
to become so," do they doubt that such an oligarchy will 
generally succeed ? Besides, banking and manufacturing 
stocks are not urged by despair to seek a controlling in- 
fluence in politics. They know they are about equally 
safe, whichever party rules, — that no party wishes to 
legislate their rights away. Slave property knows that its 
being allowed to exist depends on its having the virtual 
control of the government. Its constant presence in pol- 
itics is dictated, therefore, by despair, as well as by the 
wish to secure fresh privileges. Money, however, is not 
the only strength of the Slave Power. That, indeed, 
were enough, in an age when capitalists are our feudal 
barons. But, though driven entirely from national shelter, 
the slaveholders would have the strength of old associa- 
tions, and of peculiar laws in their own States, which 
gives those States wholly into their hands. A weaker 
prestige, fewer privileges, and less comparative wealth, 
have enabled the British aristocracy to rule England for 
two centuries, though the root of their strength was cut 
at Naseby. It takes ages for deeply-rooted institutions to 
die ; and driving slavery into the States will hardly be our 
Naseby. Whoever, therefore, lays the flattering unction 
to his soul, that, while slavery exists anywUf're in the 



144 TH^FfilLOSOPHY OF 

States, our legislators will sit down " like a band of broth- 
ers," — unless they are all slaveholding brothers, — is 
doomed to find himself wofully mistaken. Mr. Adams, 
ten years ago, refused to sanction this doctrine of his 
friend, Mr. Giddings, combating it ably and eloquently in 
his well-known reply to Ingersoll. Though Mr Adams 
touches on but one point, the prmciple he lays down has 
many other applications. 

But is Mr. Giddings willing to sit down with slave- 
holders, " like a band of brothers," and not seek, knowing 
all the time that they are tyi'ants at home, to use the 
common strength to protect their victims ? Does he not 
know that it is impossible for Free States and Slave States 
to unite under any form of Constitution, no matter how 
clean the parchment may be, without the compact re- 
sulting in new strength to the slave system ? It is the 
unimpaired strength of Massachusetts and New York, 
and the youthful vigor of Ohio, that, even now, enable 
bankrupt Carolina to hold up the institution. Every 
nation must maintain peace within her limits. No gov- 
ernment can exist which does not fulfil tliat fimction. 
When we say the Union will maintain peace in Carolina, 
that being a Slave State, what does " peace " mean ? It 
means keeping the slave beneath the heel of his master. 
Now, even on the principle of two wrongs making a right, 
if we put this great weight of a common government into 
the scale of the slaveholder, we are bound to add some- 
thing equal to the slave's side. But no, Mr. Giddings is 
content to give the slaveholder the irresistible and organic 
help of a common government, and bind himself to utter 
no word, and move not a finger, in his civil capacity, to 
help the slave ! An Abolitionist would find himself not 
much at home, I fancy, in that " band of brothers " ! 

And Mr. Sumner " knows no better aim, under the 
Constitution, than to bring back the government " to 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 145 

where it was in 1789 ! Has tlie voyage been so very 
honest and prosperous a one, in his opinion, that his only 
wish is to start again with the same ship, the same crew, 
and the same saiHng-orders ? Grant all he claims as to 
the state of public opinion, the intentions of leading men, 
and the form of our institutions at that period ; still, with 
all these checks on wicked men, and helps to good ones, 
here we are, in 1853, according to his own showing, ruled 
by slavery, tainted to the core with slavery, and binding the 
infamous Fumtive Slave Law like an honorable frontlet 
on our brows ! The more accurate and truthful his glow- 
ing picture of the public virtue of 1789, the stronger my 
argument. If even all those great patriots, and all that 
enthusiasm for justice and liberty, did not avail to keep us 
safe in such a Union, what will ? In such desperate cir- 
cumstances, can his statesmanship devise no better aim 
than to try the same experiment over again, under pre- 
cisely the same conditions ? What new guaranties does 
he propose to prevent the voyage from being again turned 
into a piratical slave-trading cruise ? None ! Have sixty 
years taught us nothing ? In 1660, the English thought, 
in recalling Charles II., that the memory of that scaffold 
which had once darkened the windows of Whitehall 
would be guaranty enough for his good behavior. But, 
spite of the spectre, Charles II. repeated Charles I., and 
James outdid him. Wiser by this experience, when the 
nation, in 1689, got another chance, they trusted to no 
guaranties, but so arranged the very elements of their 
government that William III. could not repeat Charles I. 
Let us profit by the lesson. These mistakes of leading 
men merit constant attention. Such remarks as those I 
have quoted, uttered from the high places of political life, 
however carefully guarded, have a sad influence on the 
rank and file of the party. The antislavery awakening 
has^cost too many years and too much labor to risk letting 

10 



146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

its energy be turned into a wrong channel, or balked by 
fruitless experiments. Neither the sfeve nor the country 
must be cheated a second time. 

Mr. Chairman, when I remember the grand port of 
these men elsewhere, and witness this confusion of ideas, 
and veiling of their proud crests to party necessities, they 
seem to me to lose in Washino-ton something of their old 
giant proportions. How often have we witnessed this 
change ! It seems the inevitable result of political life 
under any government, but especially under ours ; and 
we are surprised at it in these men, only because we 
fondly hoped they would be exceptions to the general rule. 
It was Chamfort, I think, who first likened a republican 
senate-house to Milton's Pandemonium; — another proof 
of the rare insight French writers have shown in criticising 
republican institutions. The Capitol at Washington al- 
ways brings to my mind that other Capitol, which in Mil- 
ton's great epic "rose like an exhalation" "from the 
burning marl," — that towering palace, " with starry 
lamps and blazing cressets " hung, — with " roof of fretted 
gold " and stately height, its hall " like a covered field." 
You remember, Sir, the host of archangels gathered round 
it, and how thick the airy crowd 

" Swarmed and were straitened ; till, the signal given, 
Behold a wondfet ! They but now who seemed 
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 
Throng numberless, like that pygmean race 
Beyond the Indian mount ; or fairy elves, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees. 

Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms 
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 
Though without number still, amid the hall 
Of that infernal court." 

Mr. Chairman, they got no further than the hall 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 147 

[Cheers.] They were not, in the current phrase, " a 
liealtliy party " / The healthy party — the men who 
made no compromise in order to come under that arch — 
Milton describes further on, where he says : 

"But for within, 

And in their own dimensions, like themselves. 

The great serapliic lords and cherubim, 

In close recess and secret conclave, sat ; 

A thousand demigods on golden seats 

Erequent and full." 

These were the healthy party ! [Loud applause.] These 
are the Casses and the Houstons, the Footes and the 
Soul(3s, the Clays, the Websters, and the Douglases, that 
bow no lofty forehead in the dust, but can find ample 
room and verge enough under the Constitution. Our 
friends go down there, and must be dwarfed into pygmies 
before they can find space within the lists ! [Cheers.] 

It would be superfluous to say that we gi'ant the entire 
sincerity and true-heartedness of these men. But in 
critical times, when a wrong step entails most disastrous 
consequences, to " mean well " is not enough. Sincerity 
is no shield for any man from the criticism of his fellow- 
laborers. I do not fear that such men as these will take 
offence at our discussion of their views and conduct. 
Long years of hard labor, in which we have borne at least 
our share, have resulted in a golden opportunity. How 
to use it, friends differ. Shall we stand courteously silent, 
and let these men play out the play, when, to our think- 
ing, their plan will slacken the zeal, balk the hopes, and 
waste the efforts of the slave's friends ? No ! I know 
Charles Sumner's love for the cause so well, that I am 
sure he will welcome my criticism whenever I deem his 
counsel wrong ; that he will hail every effort to serve our 
common client more efficiently. [Great cheering.] It is 
not his honor nor mine that is at issue ; not his feeling nor 
mine that is to be consulted. The only question for either 



148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

of US is, What in these golden moments can be done ? 
where can the hardest blow be struck ? [Loud applause.] 
I hope I am just to Mr. Sumner ; I have known him long, 
and honor him. I know his genius, I honor his virtues ; 
yet if, from his high place, he sends out counsels which I 
think dangerous to the cause, I am bound to raise my 
voice against them. I do my duty in a private communi- 
cation to him first, then in public to his friends and mine. 
The friendship that will not bear this criticism is but the 
frost-work of a winter's morning, which the sun looks 
upon and it is gone. His friendship will survive all that 
I say of him, and mine will survive all that he shall say 
of me ; and this is the only way in which the antislavery 
cause can be served. Truth, success, victory, triumph 
over the obstacles that beset us, — this is all either of us 
wants. [Cheers.] 

If all I have said to you is untrue, if I have exag- 
gerated, explain to me this fact. In 1831, Mr. Garrison 
commenced a paper advocating the doctrine of immediate 
emancipation. He had against him the thirty thousand 
churches and all the clergy of the country, — its wealth, 
its commerce, its press. In 1831, what was the state of 
things ? There was the most entire ignorance and apathy 
on the slave question. If men knew of the existence of 
slavery, it was only as a part of picturesque Virginia life. 
No one preached, no one talked, no one wrote about it. 
No whisper of it stirred the surface of the political sea. 
The Church heard of it occasionally, when some coloniza- 
tion acrent asked fnnds to send the blacks to Africa. Old 
school-books tainted with some antislavery selections had 
passed out of use, and new ones were compiled to suit the 
times. Soon as any dissent from the prevailing faith ap- 
peared, every one set himself to crush it. The pulpits 
preached at it ; the press denounced it ; mobs tore down 
houses, threw presses into the fire and the stream, and 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 149 

shot the editors ; rehglous conventions tried to smother it ; 
parties arrayed themselves against it. Daniel Webster 
boasted in the Senate, that he had never introduced the 
subject of slavery to that body, and never would. Mr. 
Clay, in 1839, makes a speech for the Presidency, in 
which he says, that to discuss the subject of slavery is 
moral treason, and that no man has a right to introduce 
the subject into Congress. Mr. Benton, in 1844, laid 
down his platform, and he not only denies the right, but 
asserts that he never has and never will discuss the sub- 
ject. Yet Mr. Clay, from 1839 down to his death, hardly 
made a remarkable speech of any kind, except on slavery. 
Mr. Webster, having indulged now and then in a little 
easy rhetoric, as at Niblo's and elsewhere, opens his mouth 
in 1840, generously contributing his aid to both sides, and 
stops talking about it only when death closes his lips. Mr. 
Benton's six or eight speeches in the United States Senate 
have all been on the subject of slavery in the Southwestern 
section of the country, and form the basis of whatever 
claim he has to the character of a statesman, and he owes 
his seat in the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to anti- 
slavery pretensions ! The Whig and Democratic parties 
pledged themselves just as emphatically against the anti- 
slavery discussion, — against agitation and free speech. 
These men said : '' It sha'n't be talked about, it won't be 
talked about!" These are your statesmen! — men who 
understand the present, that is, and mould the future ! 
The man who understands his own time, and whose genius 
moulds the future to his views, he is a statesman, is he 
not ? These men devoted themselves to banks, to the 
tariff, to internal improvements, to constitutional and 
financial questions. They said to slavery : " Back ! no 
entrance here ! We pledge ourselves against you." And 
then there came up a humble printer-boy, who whipped 
them into the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur's 



150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

starling, nothing but slavery. He scattered all these 
gigantic shadows, — tariff, bank, constitutional questions, 
financial questions, — and slavery, like the colossal head in 
Walpole's romance, came up and filled the whole political 
horizon ! [Enthusiastic applause.] Yet you must remem- 
ber he is not a statesman ; he is a " fanatic." He has no 
discipline, — Mr. '' Ion " says so ; he does not understand 
the " discipline that is essential to victory " ! This man 
did not understand his own time, — he did not know what 
the future was to be, — he was not able to shape it, — he 
had no " prudence," — he had no '^ foresight " ! Daniel 
Webster says, " I have never introduced this subject, and 
never will," — and died broken-hearted because he had 
not been able to talk enough about it. Benton says, " I 
will never speak of slavery," and lives to break with 
his party on this issue ! Mv. Clay says it is " moral trea- 
son " to introduce the subject into Congress, and lives to 
see Congress turned into an antislavery debating-society, 
to suit the purpose of one " too powerful individual " ! 

These were statesmen, mark you ! Two of them have 
gone to their graves covered with eulogy ; and our na- 
tional stock of eloquence is all insufficient to describe how 
profound and far-reaching was the sagacity of Daniel 
Webster ! Remember who it was that said, in 1831, " I 
am in earnest, — I will not equivocate, — I will not 
excuse, — I will not retreat a single inch, — and I ivill he 
heard!'' [Repeated cheers.] That speaker has lived 
twenty-two years, and the complaint of twenty-three 
millions of people is, " Shall we never hear of anything 
but slavery ? " [Cheers.] I heard Dr. Kirk, of Boston, 
say in his own pulpit, when he returned from London, — 
where he had been as a representative to the " Evangeli- 
cal Alliance," — "I went up to London, and they asked 
me what I thought of the question of immediate emancipa- 
tion. They examined us all. Is an American never Ut 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 151 

travel anywhere in the world but men will throw this 
troublesome question in his face ? " Well, it is all his 
fault [pointing to Mr. Garrison]. [Enthusiastic cheers.] 

Now, when we come to talk of statesmanship, of sagacity 
in choosing time and measures, of endeavor, by proper 
means, to right the public mind, of keen insight into the 
present and potent sway over the future, it seems to me 
that the Abolitionists, who have taken — whether for good 
or for ill, whether to their discredit or to their praise — 
this country by the four corners, and shaken it until you 
can hear nothing but slavery, whether you travel in rail- 
road or steamboat, whether you enter the hall of legisla- 
tion or read the columns of a newspaper, — it seems to me 
that such men may point to the present aspect of the 
nation, to their originally avowed purpose, to the pledges 
and efforts of all your great men against them, and then 
let you determine to which side the credit of sagacity and 
statesmanship belongs. Napoleon busied himself, at St. 
Helena, in showino; how Wellino;ton ouo;ht not to have 
conquered at Waterloo. The world has never got time 
to listen to the explanation. Sufficient for it that the 
Allies entered Paris. In like manner, it seems hardly 
the province of a defeated Church and State to deny the 
skill of measures by which they have been conquered. 

It may sound strange to some, this claim for Mr. Garri- 
son of a profound statesmanship. Men have heard him 
styled a mere fanatic so long, that they are incompetent to 
judge him fairly. " The phrases men are accustomed," 
says Goethe, " to repeat incessantly, end by becoming 
convictions, and ossify the organs of intelligence." I 
cannot accept you, therefore, as my jury. I appeal from 
Festus to CiBsar ; from the prejudice of our streets to the 
common sense of the world, and to your children. 

Every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind must see that 
such an evil as slavery will yield only to the most radical 



152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

treatment. If you consider the work we have to do, you 
will not think us needlessly aggressive, or that we dig 
down unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our 
enterprise. A money power of two thousand millions of 
dollars, as the prices of slaves now range, held by a small 
body of able and desperate men ; that body raised into a 
political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions ; 
cotton, the product of slave labor, forming the basis of our 
whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus 
subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to 
vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a 
bitter prejudice against the black race ; our leading men 
bribed, by ambition, either to silence or open hostility ; — 
in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely ? On 
a few cold prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the 
heart ? On a church resolution, hidden often in its rec- 
ords, and meant only as a decent cover for servility in 
daily practice ? On political parties, with their superficial 
influence at best, and seeking ordinarily only to use ex- 
isting prejudices to the best advantage ? Slavery has 
deeper root here than any aristocratic institution has in 
Europe ; and politics is but the common pulse-beat, of 
wliich revolution is the fever-spasm. Yet we have seen 
European aristocracy survive storms which seemed to 
reach down to the primal strata of European life. Shall 
we, then, trust to mere politics, where even revolution 
has failed ? How shall the stream rise above its foun- 
tain ? Where shall our church organizations or parties 
get strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the 
Slave Power ? Shall the thing formed say to him that 
formed it. Why hast thou made me thus ? The old jest 
of one who tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a 
tame picture of the man who imagines that, by working 
solely through existing sects and parties, he can destroy 
slavery. Mechanics say nothing but an earthquake, 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 153 

strong enough to move all Egypt, can bring down tlie 
Pyramids. 

Experience has confirmed these views. The Aboli- 
tionists who have acted on them have a " short method " 
with all unbelievers. They have but to point to their 
own success, in contrast with every other man's failure. 
To waken the nation to its real state, and chain it to the 
consideration of this one duty, is half the work. So much 
we have done. Slavery has been made the question of 
this generation. To startle the South to madness, so that 
every step she takes, in her blindness, is one step more 
toward ruin, is much. This we have done. Witness 
Texas and the Fugitive Slave Law. To have elaborated 
for the nation the only plan of redemption, pointed out the 
only exodus from this " sea of troubles," is much. This 
we claim to have done in our motto of Immediate, Un- 
conditional Emancipation on the Soil. The closer 
any statesmanlike mind looks into the question, the more 
favor our plan finds with it. The Christian asks fairly 
of the infidel, " If this religion be not from God, how do 
you explain its triumph, and the history of the first three 
centuries ? " Our question is similar. If our agitation has 
not been wisely planned and conducted, explain for us the 
history of the last twenty years ! Experience is a safe 
light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects 
success in future from the same means which have secured 
it in times past. 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORmG.* 



MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: The peti- 
tions offered you on any one topic are usually all in 
the same words. On the present occasion, I observe on 
youi' table twelve or fourteen different forms. This is 
very significant. It shows they do not proceed from a 
central committee, which has been organized to rouse the 
Commonwealth. They speak the instinctive, irrepressible 
wish of all parts of the State. It is the action of persons 
of different parties, sects, and sections, moving indepen- 
dently of each other, but seeking the same object. Some 
persons have sneered at these petitions because women are 
found among the signers. Neither you. Gentlemen, nor 
the Legislature, will maintain that women, that is, just 
one half of the Commonwealth, have no right to petition. 
A civil right, which no one denies even to foreigners, will 
not certainly be denied to the women of Massachusetts. 
And is there any one thoughtless enough to affirm that 
this is not a proper occasion for women to exercise their 
rights ? These petitions ask the removal of a Judge of 
Probate. Probate judges are the guardians of widows 
and orphans. Women have a peculiar interest in the 
character of such judges. He chooses an exceedingly bad 
occasion to lauo;h, who lauo;hs when the women of the 

* Argument before the Committee on Federal Relations of the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, in Support of the Petitions for the Removal of Edward 
Greely Loring from the Office of Judge of Probaie, Februarj 20, 1855. 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 155 

Commonwealth ask you to remove a Judge of Probate, 
who has shown that he is neither a humane man nor a 
good lawyer. In the whole of my remarks, Gentlemen, I 
beg you to bear in mind that we, the petitioners, are ask- 
ing you to remove, not a judge mereh^, but a Judge of 
Probate. A magistrate who is, in a peculiar sense, the 
counsellor of the widow and the fatherless. 

The family, in the moment of terrible bereavement and 
distress, must first stand before him. To his discretion and 
knowledge are committed most delicate questions, large 
amounts of property, and very dear and vastly important 
family relations. Surely, that should not be a rude hand 
which is tluTist among chords that have just been sorely 
wrung. Surely, he should be a wise and most trustworthy 
man who is to settle questions on many of which, from the 
nature of the case, there can, practically, be no appeal. 
His court is not watched by a jury. It is silent and 
private, and has little publicity in its proceedings. He 
should be, therefore, most emphatically a magistrate able 
to stand alone ; whose rigid independence cannot be over- 
awed or swayed by cunning or able individuals about him ; 
one skilful in the law, and who, while he holds the scales 
of justice most exactly even, has a tender and humane 
heart ; one whose generous instincts need no prompting 
from without. 

Some object that this petition asks you to do an act fa- 
tal, they say, to the independence of the judiciary. The 
petitioners are asked whether they do not know the value 
and importance of an independent judiciary. Mr. Chair- 
man, we are full}^ aware of its importance. We know as 
well as our fellow-citizens the unspeakable value of a high- 
minded, enlightened, humane, independent, and just judge ; 
one whom neither '^ fear, favor, affection^ nor hope of re- 
ward " can turn from his course. It is because we are 
so fully impressed with this, that we appear before you- 



156 EEMOrafc OF JUDGE LORING. 

Taking our history as a whole, we are proud of the Bench 
of Massachusetts. You have given no higher title than 
that of a Massachusetts Judge to Sewall, to Sedgwick, to 
Parsons. Take it away, then, from one who volunteers, 
hastens, to execute a statute which the law as well as 
the humanity of the nineteenth century regards as infa- 
mous and an outrage. We come before you, not to attack 
the Bench, but to strengthen it, by securing it the only 
support it can have under a government like ours, — the 
confidence of the people. You cannot legislate judges 
into the confidence of the people. You cannot preach 
them into it ; confidence must be earned. To make the 
name of judge respected, it must be worthy of respect, — 
must never be borne by unworthy men. It never will be 
either respected or respectable while this man bears it. 
1 might surely ask his removal in the names of the Judges 
of Massachusetts, who must feel that this man is no fit 
fellow for them. The special reasons why we deem him 
an unfit judge, I shall take occasion to state by and by. 
At present, I will only add, that it is not, as report says, 
merely because he differs from us on the question of slav- 
ery, that we ask his removal. It is not for an honest or 
for any other difference of opinion that we ask it ; but, 
as we shall presently take occasion to state, for far other 
and very grave reasons. 

I do not know, Gentlemen, what course of remark the 
remonstrant, or his counsel, may adopt ; but I have 
thought it necessary to say so much, in order that they 
may understand our position, and thus avoid any needless 
enlargement upon our want of respect for the function, or 
appreciation of the value, of an independent, high-minded 
judiciary. You will see, in the com'se of my remarks, 
that it is because this incumbent has sinned in that very 
respect that we appear here. 

Gentlemen, these petitions, though variously worded, 



EEMOVAL OF JUDGE LOKING. 15/ 

all ask you to " taJve proper steps for the removal of Edward 
Greely Loring from office," — '•'• proper stepsJ'^ It is for 
the Legislature to decide what the " proper steps " are. 

In offering some remarks on the proper method of pro- 
cedure in this case, you will bear in mind that I neces 
sarily, perhaps, go over more ground than the progress of 
this discussion may show to have been necessary ; because, 
of course, I must be entirely ignorant Avhat ground the 
remonstrant, or his counsel, will take. I must, therefore, 
cover all the ground. 

You are of course aware, Gentlemen, that, originally, all 
judges were appointed by the king, and held their offices 
as long and on such conditions as he pleased to prescribe. 
Some held as long as they behaved well, — during good 
behavior^ as our Constitution translates the old law Latin, 
quamdiu se bene gesserint ; others held during the pleasure 
of the king, — durante bene placito^ as the phrase is. This, 
of course, made the judges entirely the creatures of the 
king. To prevent this, and secure the independence of 
the judges, after the English Revolution of 1689, it was 
fixed by the Act of Settlement, as it is called, that the 
king should not have the power to remove judges, but that 
they should hold their offices " during good behavior.^ 
They were still, however, removable by the king, on ad- 
dress from both Houses of Parliament. 

Hallam, in his Constitutional History, states very tersely 
the exact state of the English law, and it is precisely the 
law of this Commonwealth also, in these words : " No 
judge can be dismissed from office except in consequence 
of a conviction for some offence, or the address of both 
Houses of Parliament^ which is tantamount to an act of 
Legislature."" (Const. Hist., Am. edit., p. 597.) 

To come now to our Commonwealth. There are, as I 
just intimated, two ways of removing a judge known to 
the Constitution : one is, by impeachment ; and the other 



158 EEMO^INOF JUDGE LORING. 

IS, bj address of the Legislature to the Governor. A 
judge who commits a crime, whether in his official capa- 
city or not, may be punished by iHdictment, precisely as 
any other man may, — this principle may be left out of 
the question. A judge, who, sitting on the bench, trans- 
gresses the laws in his official capacity, may be impeached 
by the House of Representatives before the Senate, as a 
Court of Impeachment, and removed. (Const. Mass., 
Chap. I. Sec. 2, Art. 8.) 

The petitioners do not ask you to impeach Judge Lo- 
ring. Why ? Because they do not come here to say that 
he has been guilty of official misconduct. To render a 
judge liable to nupeachment, he must be proved to have 
misconducted i7i Ids official capacity. I shall not go into 
the niceties of the law of impeachment. One would sup- 
pose, from the arguments of the press at the present time, 
and their comments on Mr. Loring's remonstrance, that a 
judge could not be impeached unless he had violated some 
express law. This is not so. It has been always held, 
that a judge may be guilty of official misconduct^ and liable 
to impeachment, who had not violated any positive statute. 
It is enough that the act violates the principles of the 
common law. All authorities agree in this, and some 
would seem to lay down the rule still more broadly. (See 
Story on the Const., Bk. III. ch. 10, §§ 796-798, and 
Shaw's argument when counsel asiainst Prescott, Prescott's 
Trial, p. 180.) As the Constitution confines the process 
of impeachment to cases of official misconduct^ and as we 
do not pretend that Mr. Loring, sitting as a Judge of Pro- 
bate., has been guilty of any such, I pass from this point. 

But the Constitution provides another form, which is, 
that a judge may be removed from office by address of 
both Houses to His Excellency the Governor. In the 
first place. Gentlemen, let me read to you the source of 
this power. '' All judicial officers, duly appointed, com- 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 159 

missiniYpd, and sworn, shall hold their offices during good 
behavioi, excepting such concerning whom there is a dif- 
ferent provision made in this Constitution : Provided^ 
nevertheless, the Governor, with consent of the Council, 
may remove them upon address of both Houses of the 
Legislature." (Const, of Mass., Chap. III. Art. 1.) 
" Provided^ nevertheless^ the Governor, with consent of the 
Council, may remove them upon the address of both Houses 
of the Legislature." Now, Gentlemen, looking on the face 
of this, it would be naturally inferred that, notwithstanding 
his "good behavior," and without alleging any violation of 
it, a judge could, nevertheless, be removed by address ; 
that an " address " need not be based on a charcre of official 
misconduct, — that an " address " need not be based on a 
charge of illegal conduct, in any capacity. This seems so 
clear, that I should have left this point without further 
remark, if Mr. Loring had not placed upon your files a 
remonstrance against the prayer of these petitioners, which 
remonstrance (I shall not occupy your time by reading it) 
is based upon the principle, that it would be a hard and 
unjust procedure if either house should address the Gov- 
ernor against him, seeing that he has not violated any 
State law, or done anything that was illegal, or that was 
prohibited by the laws of Massachusetts, and alleging that 
he has only acted in conformity with the official oath of all 
officers of the State to support the Constitution of the 
United States. The defence of the remonstrant, as far as 
we are informed of it, is, tliat he ought not to be removed, 
because he has violated no laiv of Massachusetts. To that 
plea, Gentlemen, I shall simply reply : the method of re- 
moving a judge by " address " does not require that the 
House or Senate should be convinced that he has violated 
any law whatever. Grant all Mr. Loring states in his 
remonstrance, — that he has broken no law, that he 
stands legally impeccable before you ; which, in other 



160 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LOEING. 

words, is simply to say that he cannot be indicted. If he 
had violated a law, he could be indicted ; he comes to this 
house and says, in effect, " Gentlemen, I cannot be in- 
dicted ; therefore^ I ought not to be removed." The reply 
of the petitioners is, A man may be unfit for a judge long 
before he becomes fit for the state-prison. Their reply is, 
(leaving for the time all question of impeachment,) It is 
not necessary that a judge should render himself liable to 
indictment, in order to be subject to be removed by " ad- 
dress." He can be removed (as my brother who preceded 
me [Seth Webb, Jr., Esq.] has well said) for any cause 
which the Legislature, in its discretion, thinks a fitting 
cause for his removal. Even if he has not violated any 
law of the Commonwealth, written or unwritten, still he 
may be removed, if the Legislature thinks the public in- 
terest demands it. The matter is entirely within your 
discretion. My proof of this is, first, the language of the 
Constitution. The Constitution says : " The Senate shall 
be a court with full authority to hear and determine all 
impeachments made by the House of Representatives 
against any officer or officers of the Commonwealth, for 
misconduct and mal-administration in their offices." 
(Chap. I. Sec. 2, Art. 8.) Now, suppose it true, as some 
claim, that such misconduct must amount to a violation of 
positive law, that nothing short of that will justify impeach- 
ment; the mere fact that the Constitution provides an- 
other way would be prima facie evidence that it meant to 
lay a broader foundation for removal ; else, why two 
methods ? If, in his office, he had outraged the laws of 
the State, he could be impeached. Is not one remedy 
sufficient ? Why does the Constitution provide another ? 
Because the people, through then- Constitution, meant to 
say, " We will not have judges that cannot be removed 
unless they have violated a statute. We will provide, 
that in case of any misconduct, any unfittmg character, 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LOEING. 161 

any incapacity or loss of confidence, the supreme power 
of the Legislature may intervene and remove them." If 
impeachment applies only to official misconduct, expressly 
prohibited by statute, as seems to be claimed, then, from 
the existence of another additional method in the Consti- 
tution, one would naturally infer that this other power 
referred to misconduct not official, and not expressly pro- 
hibited by statute. In addition to the mere letter of the 
Constitution, and the inference from the fact of two pow- 
ers being granted, we have the action of the Common- 
wealth in times past. I have not time for historical de- 
tails, but the power of address, whenever it has been used 
in this Commonwealth, has been used to remove judges 
who had not violated any law. Judge Bradbury was re- 
moved, I think, for mental incapacity, resulting from 
advancing age. Of course, intellectual inefficiency is not 
impeachable ; it is not such " misconduct or mal-admuiistra- 
tion " as renders a man liable to impeachment; but the Con- 
stitution, hi order to cover the whole ground, has left with 
the Legislature the power to remove an inefficient judge, 
— a judge who has grown too old to perform his duties. 
But it happens that this clause of the Constitution hafj 
been passed upon, — not, indeed, by the Supreme Court, 
but I may say by equally high authority. It has been 
expounded by some of the ablest men the Commonv/ealth 
ever knew, and in circumstances which preclude the idea 
of prejudice or passion. It is fortunate for these petition- 
ers, in regard to this claim of the power of the Legislature 
(which it is said Mr. Loring's friends intend to deny, and 
which his remonstrance does practically deny), — it is 
fortunate for them, that in the Constitutional Convention 
of Massachusetts, in 1820, this clause of the Constitution 
was deliberately discussed. It was discussed. Gentlemen, 
not when there was a case before the Commonwealth, 
when men were divided into parties, when personal sym- 
11 



162 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

pathy or antipathy might bias men's judgments, but when 
the debaters were in the most urtimpassioned state of 
mind ; — statesmen, endeavoring to found the laws of the 
Commonwealth on the best basis. The discussion was 
long and able. I sliall read you the sentiments of differ- 
ent gentlemen who took part in that discussion, for this 
purpose, — to show you that this Legislature has an un- 
limited power of removal for any cause, — whether the 
law has been violated or not, — wd^xether acts were done 
by a judge in his official capacity or any other. Allow me 
to remind you. Gentlemen, that there are two questions 
you are bound to ask. The first is. Can we remove a 
judge who is not guilty of any official misconduct^ of any 
violation of statute law, in any capacity ? The second is, 
If we have the power, ought we to exercise it in the 
present case ? 1st. Have we this power ? 2d. Ought we 
to exercise it ? 

I propose to read you extracts from the speeches in the 
Massachusetts Convention of 1820, to show that the 
Legislature has, in the judgment of our ablest lawyers and 
statesmen, an unlimited authority to ask the removal of 
judges whenever it sees fit, and for any cause the Legis- 
lature thinks sufficient ; that the People, the original 
source of all power, have not parted with their sovereignty 
in this respect, — did not intend to part with it, and did 
not part with it. When I have convinced you, if I shall 
succeed in convincing you, that you have this authority, 
I shall, with your permission, say a few words to enforce 
the other point, that you ought to exercise it according to 
the prayer of the petitioners. 

In the first place, I read the clause of the Constitution : 
" The Governor, with consent of the Council, may remove 
them [judicial officers] upon the address of both houses 
of the Legislature." The Constitutional Convention, 
which met in 1820, appointed a committee to take this 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 163 

clause into consideration. That committee consisted of 
Messrs. Story of Salem (Judge Story, of the Supreme 
Court of the United States), John Phillips of Boston 
(Judge of the Common Pleas Court of Massachusetts, and 
President of the Senate), Martin of Dorchester, Cum- 
mings of Salem (Judge of the Common Pleas), Levi 
Lincoln of Worcester (afterwards Judge of our Supreme 
Court and Governor of the Commonwealth), Andrews 
of Newburyjiort, Holmes of Rochester, Hills of Pittsfield, 
Austin of Charlestown (High Sheriff of Middlesex Coun- 
ty), Leland of Roxbury (afterwards Judge of Probate 
for Norfolk County), Kent of West Springfield, Shaw of 
Boston (present Chief Justice of the Commonwealth), 
Marston of Barnstable, Austin of Boston (since Attorney- 
General of the Commonwealth), and Bartlett of Medford, 
— a committee highly respectable for the ability and 
position of its members. Permit me to read a section of 
their Report (p. 136) : — 

" By the first article of the Constitution, any judge may be 
removed from his ofiice by the Governor, with the advice of the 
Council, upon the address of a bare majority of both Houses of 
the Legislature. The committee are of opinion that this pro- 
vision has a tendency materially to impair the independence of 
the judges, and to destroy the efficacy of the clause which declares 
they shall hold their offices during good behavior. The tenure 
of good behavior seems to the committee indispensable to guard 
judges, on the one hand, from the effects of sudden resentments 
and temporary prejudices entertained by the people, and, on the 
other hand, from the influence which ambitious and powerful 
men naturally exert over those who are dependent upon their 
good-\vill. A provision which should at once secure to the 
people a power of removal in cases of palpable misconduct or 
incapacity, and at the same time secure to the judges a reason- 
able permanency in their offices, seems of the greatest utility ; 
and such a provision will, in the opinion of the committee, bo 
obtained by requiring that the removal instead of being upoa 



164 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

the address of a majority, shall be upon the address of two thirdt 
of the members present of each House of the Legislature." 

TJie committee, you see, Gentlemen, acknowledge that 
there is unlimited power ; thej think that power danger- 
ous ; they advise that it should be limited — how ? Ob- 
serve, even this committee, although they say they think 
it dangerous, do not advise it should be stricken out ; but 
they advise it should be limited by requiring a two-thirds 
vote, and this is all. 

Kemember, Gentlemen, that I read the following ex- 
tracts, not to show the opinion of this Convention as to the 
value or the danger of this power ; I merely wish to show 
you that, in the opinion of the ablest lawyers of the State, 
the Constitution, as it then stood, (and it stands now pre- 
cisely/ as it stood then,^ gave to this Legislature unlimited 
authority to remove judges, for any cause they saw fit ; 
and that, while all the speakers Avere fully aware of its 
liability to abuse, no speaker denied Its unlimited extent, 
or proposed to strike the power from the Constitution. 
After that report had been put In, the Convention pro- 
ceeded to take it up for discussion. 

The first gentleman who joins, to any purpose, In the 
debate, is Samuel Hubbard, Esq., perhaps, beyond all 
comparison, the fairest-minded as well as one of the ablest 
lawyers of the Suffolk bar ; and let me add, that, after a 
life passed in the most responsible practice of his profes- 
sion, he finished it on the Bench of the Supreme Court. 
His testimony Is the more valuable, because Mr. Hubbard 
thought this provision eminently dangerous. But he 
says : — 

" The Constitution vrns defective in not sufficiently securing 
the independence of judges. He asked if a judge was free when 
the Legislature might have him removed ivhen it pleased. .... 
The tenure of office of judges was said to be during good be- 
havior. Was tliis the case, when the Legislature might deprive 



BEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 165 

them of tLeir office, although they had committed no crime ? . . . . 
No justice of the peace was allowed to be deprived of his office 
without a hearing, but here the judges of the highest court might 
be dismissed without an opportunity of saying a word in their 
defence." 

Then comes Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw : — 

" The general principle was, that they should be independent 
of the other persons during good behavior. "What is meant by 
good behavior? The faithful discharge of the duties of the 
office. If not faithful, they were liable to trial by impeachments. 
But cases might arise when it might be desirable to remove a 
judge from office for oilier causes. He may become incapable 
of performing the duties of the office without fault. He may 
lose his reason, or be otherwise incapacitated. It is the theory 
of our government, that no man shall receive the emoluments of 
office without performing the services, tliough he is incapacitated 
by the providence of God. It is necessary, therefore, that there 
should be provision for this case. But in cases when it applies, 
the reason will be so manifest as to command a general assent. 
It must be known so as to admit of no doubt, if a judge has lost 
his reason, or become incapable of performing his duties. As it 
does not imply misbehavior, if the reason cannot be made mani- 
fest so as to command the assent of a great majority of the Legis- 
lature, of two thirds at least, there can be no necessity for the 
removal. By the Constitution as it stands, the judges hold their 
offices at the will of the majority of the Legislature. He con- 
fessed with pride and pleasure that the power had not been 
abused. But it was capable of being abused. K so, it ought to 
be guarded against. That could be done by requiring the voice 
of two thirds of each branch of the Legislature." 

Then comes William Prescott, a name well known here 
and the world over. He was a man of English make ; 
taciturn, of few words, no diffuse American talker. He 
spoke little, but each word was worth gold. His rare civil 
virtues, great ability, and eminently judicial mind added 
lustre to a name that was heard in the van of Bunker 
Hill fisht. 



166 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

" What security have thej [judges] by the Constitution ? 
They hold their offices as long as they behave well, and nc 
longer. They are impeached when guilty of misconduct. It is 
the duty of the House of Representatives, constituting the gi'and 
inquest of the Commonwealth, to make inquiry, — for the Senate 
to try, and, if guilty, to remove them from office. There may be 
other cases in which they ought to be removed, when not guilty 
of misconduct in office, but for infirmity. Provision is made for 
these cases, that the two branches of the Legislature, concurring 
with the Governor and Council, may remove judges from office. 
He did not object to this provision, if it was restrained so as to 
preserve the independence of the judges. They should be inde- 
pendent of the Legislature and of the Governor and Cotmcil. 
But now there is no security. The two other departments may 
remove them without inquiry, — witliout putting any reason on 
record. It is in their power to say that the judges shall no 
longer hold their offices, and that others more agreeable shall be 
put in their places. He asked, was this independence ? " 

There may be " other cases " in which they ought to 
be removed when not guilty of misconduct in office, but 
from infirmity. Is not that exactly what the petitioners 
claim ? There being no misconduct in office, no violation 
of the precise statutes of the Commonwealth, comes the 
case described by Mr. Prescott, where a judge ought to 
be dismissed for "infirmity" ; for we maintain that there 
was here a cruel " infirmity," " He did not object to this 
provision" if properly restrained, (that was the old Feder- 
alist ; the man who never was inclined to trust the people 
too far ; the man who was in favor of a strong govern- 
ment !) — "he did not object to this provision " ; all he 
asked was a two-thirds vote. 

Then comes Mr. Daniel Davis of Boston. You may 
not have known him, Gentlemen ; but those of us who are 
older remember him as the Solicitor-General for the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts. He says ; — 

"If the resolutions were before the committee in a form 



REM3VAL OF JUDGE LORING. 167 

which admitted of amendment, he would propose to alter it in 
such manner that the officer to be removed should have a right 
to be heard. No reason need now be given for the removal of a 
judge, but that the Legislature do not like him." 

He did not deny the power, did not question its utility ; 
all lie wanted was, that the officer should be heard. " No 
reason need be oiven, but that the Legislature do not like 
him." Is not this unhmited power ? The claim of Mr. 
Loring is, substantially, that you abuse your power, unless 
you charge, and prove, that he has offended against a 
statute "in such case made and provided." Mr. Daniel 
Davis says : " No reason need be given for the removal 
of a judge, but that the Legislature do not like him." 
That is his idea of the power of this Legislature. 

Then comes Mr. Henry H. Childs of Pittsfield. I do 
not know his history. He did not want the Constitution 
changed at all ; he did not ask even the two-thirds vote. 
Mr. Childs says : — 

" It was in violation of an important principle of the govern- 
ment, that the majority of the Legislature, together with the 
Governor, should not have the power of removal from office. 
This power was in accordance with the principle of the Bill of 
Rights. It was imperative in the advocates of this resolution to 
show that it was necessary to intrench this department of the 
government for its security. They had not shown it ; on the 
contrary, we were in the full tide of successful experiment. The 
founders of the Constitution intended to put the judiciary on the 
footing of the fullest independence consistent with their respon- 
sibility. " 

" This powder was in accordance with the provisions of 
the Bill of Rights." Wliat are these ? Section V. of 
the Bill of Rio;hts reads thus : — 

" All power residing originally in the people, and being de- 
rived from them, the several magistrates and officers of govern- 
ment, vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or 



168 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

judicial, are tlieir substitutes and agents, and are at all times 
accountable to them." 

Mr. Loring knew under what condition he was taking 
office. He knew this provision in the Declaration of 
Rights, that the people retain all power, and that all 
magistrates " vested with authority, whether legislative, 
executive, or judicial, are their substitutes and agents, 
and are at all times accountable to them," — in office and 
out of it. Section VIII. says further : — 

" In order to prevent those who are vested with authority 
from becoming oppressors, the people have a right, at such 
periods and in such manner as they shall establish by their frame 
of government, to cause their public officers to return to priva/e 
life ; and to fill up vacant places by certain and regular elections 
and appointments." 

No man has a rio;ht to criticise here the manner in 
which the removal is effected. Let them go elsewhere 
than to this tribunal, if they say it is a bad power. The 
people retain the right, at such periods and in such man- 
ner as they shall establish by their frame of government, 
to cause their public officers to return to private life. 

This is the principle of our Declaration of Rights, 
Mr. Childs says : " The founders of the Constitution 
intended to put the judiciary on the footing of the fullest 
independence consistent with their responsibility." Mr. 
Chairman, I beseech you, in the progress of this discus- 
sion, if the remonstrant shall ring changes on the neces- 
sity of maintaining the independence of the judiciary, to 
remember this remark, that " the founders of the Consti- 
tution intended to put the judiciary on the footing of the 
fullest independence consistent with their responsibility ^^^ 
— no more. 

Then Mr. Cummings of Salem, afterwards Judge, rose. 
He says : — 

''Tn this State, they cannot be removed on address of thft 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 169 

Legislature, but with the consent of the Council. "Was not tliis 
a sufficient guard ? Another part of the Constitution protects 
them when acused of crimes. This provision is not intended to 
embrace cases of crime, — it is only for cases when they become 
incompetent to discharge their duties. May not the people, by a 
majority, determine whether judges are incompetent ? " 

Mr. Loring says, " Show me my crime ! " Mr. Cum- 
mings says, " This provision is not intended to embrace 
cases of crime." 

Levi Lincoln of Worcester comes next. He was then 
a Democrat, — since Governor, and Judge ; 

" He was entirely satisfied with the Constitution as it was. 
He had never heard till now, and was now surprised to hear, 
that there was any want of independence in the judiciary. He 
had heard it spoken of in charges, sermons, and discourses in the 
streets, as one of the most valuable features of the Constitution, 
that it estabhshed an independent judiciary. He inquired, Was 
it dependent on the Legislature ? It was not on the Legislature 
nor on the Executive. No. judge could be removed but by the 
concurrent act of four co-ordinate branches of the government, — 
the House of Representatives, the Senate, with a different or- 
ganization from the House, the Governor, and the Council. 
Was it to be supposed that all these should conspire together to 
remove a useful judge ? But it was argued that future Legisla- 
tures might be corrupt. This was a monstrous supposition. He 
would rather suppose that a judge might be corrupt. It was 
more natural that a single person should be corrupt than a nu- 
merous body. The proposed amendment was said to be similar 
to provisions of other governments. There was no analogy, 
because other governments are not constituted like ours. It was 
said that judges have estates in tlieir offices, — he did not agree 
to tills doctrine. The office was not made for the judge, nor the 
judge for the office ; but both for the people. There was 
another tenure, — the confidence of the people. It was that 
which had hitherto occurred here. Have we, then, less reason 
to confide in posterity than our ancestors had to confide in 
us?" 



170 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LOKING. 

Then follows Mr. Daniel Webster. He had recently 
come to the State. Joining in the debate, he says : — 

" As the Constitution now stands, all judges are hable to be 
removed from office by the Governor, with the consent of the 
Council, on the address of the two Houses of the Legislature. 
It is not made necessary that the two Houses should give any 
reasons for their address, or that the judge should have an oppor- 
tunity to be heard. I look upon this as against common right, 
as well as repugnant to the general prmciples of the govern- 
ment 

" If the Legislature may remove judges at pleasure, assigning 
no cause for such removal, of course it is not to be expected that 
they would often find decisions against the constitutionality of 
their own acts." ♦ 

These are Webster's words ; and you will remember, 
Mr. Chairman, that the Constitution stands, in 1855, just 
as it stood when Webster was speaking. I cite the lan- 
miaffe to show what Mr. Webster understood to be the 
Constitution of Massachusetts, — that you could remove 
a judge without giving any reason, "at youi* pleasure," 
without hearing him. Now, what does he propose to do ? 
Does he propose to strike out that provision ? No, Sir ! 
He does not even propose a two-thirds vote. 

'• In Pennsylvania, the judges may be removed, ' for any rea- 
sonable cause,' on the addi-ess of two tliirds of the two Houses. 
In some of the States, three fourths of each House is required. 
The new Constitution of Maine has a provision, with which I 
should be content ; which is, that no judge shall be liable to be 
removed by the Legislature till the matter of liis accusation has 
been made known to him, and he has had an opportunity of 
being heard in his defence." 

He says that the Constitution gives you the power to 
remoA'e, and all he asks is, that, before doing it, you should 
allow the judge an opportunity to be heard. 

The fact is. Gentlemen, you have, according to Mr. 
Webster, the power to shut that door, and, without assign* 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 171 

mg any reason whatever, vote a judge- out of office, and 
send him word that he is out, — the Constitution does not 
guarantee hini anything else than that. Webster wanted 
it amended ; the Convention submitted a proposition for 
amendment ; but tlie people declined to accept it. This 
absolute sovereignty of Massachusetts, which, ever since 
the Colonies, had been held on to by the people, — of that 
they were unwilling to yield a whit. 

The debate continues, and Mr. Childs again joins in it. 

" The object in giving the power to the Legislature was, that 
judges might be removed when it was the itmvei^sal sentiment 
of the community that they were disqualified for the office al- 
though they could not be convicted on impeachment." 

tjan you ask anything more definite than that ? No- 
body denied it. '' The object in giving this power to the 
Legislature was, that judges might be removed, when it 
was the universal sentiment of the community that they 
were disqualified for the office, although they could not be 
convicted on impeachment." 

Gentlemen, I would not weary your patience with long 
extracts ; I am giving you only the general current of the 
discussion. The next speaker is James Trecothick Aus- 
tin, — the name of one who will not be suspected of being 
too favorable to the rights of the people ; it is not often 
that I have an opportunity to quote him on my side. 
" Nobody- objects to this provision," said Mr. Austin. 
There sat Prescott, Shaw, Webster, Story, Lincoln, — 
the men whom you look up to as the lights of this Com- 
monwealth ; but — " nobody objects to this provision " ! 

" Nobody objects to this provision. The House of Represent- 
atives is the grand inquest, — they are tried by the Senate, and 
have the right of being heard. But the Constitution admits that 
there may be cases in which judges may be removed without 
supposing a crime. But how is it to be done by this resolution ? 
There are to be two trials, when for the greater charge of a 



172 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

high cnme he has only one. It so obstructs the course of pro- 
ceeding, that it will never be used. He would suppose the case, 
not of mental disability, but the loss of public confidence. He 
knew that such cases were not to be anticipated. But he would 
look to times when the principle might be brought into operation, 
when the judge, by indulging strong party feelings, or i'rom any 
other cause, should so far have lost the confidence of the commu- 
nity that his usefulness should be destroyed. He ought in such 
cases to be removed ; but if witnesses w'ere to be summoned to 
prove specific charges, it would be impossible to remove him. A 
man may do a vast deal of mischief, and yet evade the penalty 
of the law, — a judge may act in such a manner that an intelli- 
gent community may tliink their rights in danger, and yet com- 
mit no offence against any written or unwritten law. Men are 
more likely to act in such manner as to render tliemselves nn- 
worthy to be trusted, than so as to subject themselves to trial. 
The great argument for the amendment is, that it is necessary to 
secure the independence of the judiciary. He was in favor of 
the principle, but it had its limitations. While we secure the in- 
dependence of the judges, we should remember that they are but 
men, and sometimes mere partisans." 

The remonstrant here says, I have not touched a 
statute. Mr. Austin says, No matter whether you 
have or not ; '' a man may do a vast deal of mischief, and 
yet evade the penalty of the law." Then he says he has 
heard a great deal of the weakness of the judiciary. He 
says the judiciary is not wealv. Should you chance to see 
the remonstrant appear here, attended by eminent legal 
relatives and friends, you will remember tliis : — 

'•*' The court were besides attended by a splendid and powerful 
retinue, — the bar. They have great influence from their talents, 
learning, and esprit de corps, and as an appendage to the court, 
they give them a great and able support. He did not admit 
that the judiciary was a weak branch of the government, but, on 
the contrary, it was a strong branch." 

Then comes Judge Storj. If anybody ever was, I 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 173 

may wiy, a little crazy on the subject of the independence of 
the judges, it was the late able and learned Judge Story, — 
at least during the last half of his life. What does he say ? 
He says : — 

" The Governor and Council might remove them [judges] on 
the address of a majority of the Legislature, not for crimes and 
misdemeanors, for that was provided for in another manner, but 
for no cause whatever, — no reason was to be given. A power- 
ful individual, who has a cause in court which he is unwilling to 
trust to an upright judge, may, if he has influence enough to ex- 
cite a momentary prejudice, and command a majority of tho 
Legislature, obtain his removal. He does not hold the office by 
the tenure of good behavior, but at the 'svill of a majority of the 
Legislature, and they are not bound to assign any reason for the 
exercise of their power. Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro rations 
voluntas. (Thus 1 wish it ; thus I order : let my will stand for 
a reason.) This is the provision of the Constitution, and it is 
only guarded by the good sense of the people. He had no fear 
of the voice of the people, when he could get their deliberate 
voice, — but he did fear from the Legislature, if the judge has no 
right to be heard." 

That is the opinion of the learned Judge Story as to 
the power of the Legislature. " I have no fear of the 
voice of the people," says Judge Story. All he pro- 
posed was, that the judge should have an opportunity to 
be heard. 

What was the result of this discussion ? The Conven- 
tion proposed to the people — what ? That no judge 
should ever be removed without notice. The people voted 
on that amendment, voted nay, and declined to insert it in 
the Constitution. 

Now, Gentlemen, what is my argument? Here is a 
debate on tjiis clause, not by men heated with passion, not 
by men with party purposes to serve, but by men acting 
as statesmen, in the coolest, most deliberate, and temperate 
mood, — men of various parties, Whig and Democratic — 



174 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

and every one of them asserts, without a dissenting voice, 
that this provision is inserted for the purpose of giving the 
Legislature the power to remove a judge, Avlien he has not 
violated any law of the Commonwealth. In addition to 
this. Gentlemen, I will read the remark of Chief Justice 
Shaw, when he was counsel for the House against Judge 
Prescott, of Groton, who was removed on impeachment, 
you will recollect, in 1821. On that occasion, Judge 
Shaw was counsel for the House of Representatives, and 
made some comments on this provision, which, as his opin- 
ion has a deserved weight in matters of constitutional law, 
it is well to read here. He says : — 

" It is true, that, by another course of proceeding, warranted 
by a different provision of the Constitution, any otficer may be 
removed by the Executive, at the will and pleasure of a bare 
majority of the Legislature ; a will which the Executive in 
most cases would have little power and inclination to resist. 
The Legislature, Avithout either allegation or proof, has but to 
pronounce the sic volo, sic juheo, and the officer is at once de- 
prived of his place, and of all the rank, the powers and emolu- 
ments, belonging to it. And yet, perhaps, this pro\dsion (whether 
wise or not I wdll not now stop to consider) is hardly sufficient 
to justify the extraordinary alarm which has been so eloquently 
expressed for the liberty and security of the people, or to affix 
upon the Constitution the charge of containing features more 
odious and oppressive than those of Turkish despotism. The 
truth is, that the security of our rights depends rather upon the 
general tenor and character, tlian upon particular provisions of 
our Constitution. The love of freedom and of justice, — so 
deeply engraven upon tlie hearts of the people, and interwoven 
in the whole texture of our social institutions, — a thorough and 
intelligent acquaintance with their rights, and a firm determi- 
nation to maintain them, — in short, those moral arul intellectual 
qualities \vithout which social liberty cannot exist, and over 
which despotism can obtain no control, — these stamp the char- 
acter and give security to the rights of the free people of thia 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 175 

Commonwealth. So long as such a character is maintained, no 
danger perhaps need be apprehended from the arbitrary course 
of proceeding, under the provision of the Constitution, to which I 
have alluded. But, Sir, we have never for a moment imagined 
that the proceedings on this impeachment could be influenced or 
affected by that provision. The two modes of proceeding are 
altogether distinct, and, in my Immble apprehension, were de- 
signed to eifect totally distinct objects. No, Sir; had the House 
of Representatives expected to attain their object by any means 
short of the allegation, proof, and conviction of criminal miscon- 
duct, an address, and not an impeachment, would have been tho 
course of proceeding adopted by them." 

These well-considered and weighty sentences of Chief 
Justice Shaw show his idea of the extent of your power, 
and will relieve your minds of any undue apprehension as 
to the danger of its exercise. 

The people of Massachusetts have always chosen to 
keep their judges, in some measure, dependent on the 
popular will. It is a Colonial trait, and the sovereign 
State has preserved it. Under the King, though he 
appointed the judges, the people jealously preserved 
their hold on the bench, by keephig the salaries year 
by year dependent on the vote of the popular branch 
of the Legislature. This control was often exercised. 
When Judge Oliver took pay of the King, they im- 
peached him. (See Washburn's Judicial History of 
Massachusetts, 139, 160.) When the Constitution was 
framed, the people chose to keep the same sovereignty 
in their own hands. Independence of judges, there- 
fore, in Massachusetts, Gentlemen, means, in the words 
of Mr. Childs, " the fullest independence consistent with 
their responsibility.'''' 

The opinions I have read you derive additional weight 
from the fact, that all the speakers were aware of the 
grave nature of this power, and some painted in glowing 



176 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

colors how liable to abuse it was. Still not one proposed 
to take it from you. The most anxious only asked to 
check it by requiring a two-thirds vote. This proposition 
the Convention refused to accept ; the utmost the Con- 
vention would recommend to the people was, that the 
judge should have notice and liberty to defend himself. 
Even this limitation on your power the people refused 
to adopt. They were fully warned, and deliberately, on 
matui-e reflection, decided that it was safe and wise to 
intrust you with unlimited discretion in this respect. With 
such a page in our history, it is not competent for the press 
or the friends of Judge Loring to argue that no such power 
ought to have been given you, and that it is too dangerous 
to be used. The people alone have the right to decide 
that question, and they have decided it. When, after full 
deliberation, they gave you the power, they said, in effect, 
that occasions might arise requiring its exercise, and on 
such fitting occasions they wished it exercised. Doubt- 
less, Gentlemen, this is a grave power, and one to be used 
only on important occasions. We are bound to show you, 
not light and trifling reasons for the removal of Judge 
Loring, but such grave and serious reasons, such weighty 
cause, as will justify your interference, and make this use 
of your authority strengthen rather than weaken the proper 
independence of the bench. 

Indeed, the power is in itself a wise, good, and necessary 
one, and should be lodged somewhere in every govern- 
ment. The Boston papers, in all their arguments on this 
point, take it for granted that the people are to be always 
under guardianship, — that government is a grand Probate 
Court to prevent the people — the insane and always 
under-age people — from wasting their own property and 
cutting their own throat. Not such is the theory of re- 
publican institutions. The true theory is, that the people 
came of age on the fourth day of July, 1776, and can be 



EEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 177 

trusted to manage their own affairs. The people, with 
tlieir practical common-sense, instinctive feeling of right 
and wrong, and manly love of fair play, are the true con- 
servative element in a just government. It is true, the 
people are not always right ; but it is true, also, that the 
people are not often wrong, — less often, surely, than their 
leaders. The theory of our government is, that the purity 
of the bench is a matter which concerns every individuaL 
Whenever, therefore, guilt, recklessness, or incapacity 
shield themselves on the bench, by technical shifts and 
evasions, against direct cohision with the law, it is meant 
that the reserved power of the people shall intervene, and 
save the State from harm. 

It is easy to conceive many occasions for the exercise of 
such a power. How many men among us, by gross mis- 
conduct in railroad or banking companies, have incurred 
the gravest disapprobation, and yet avoided legal convic- 
tion ? Suppose such men had been at the same time 
judges, will any one say they should have been continued 
on the bench ? Yet, on the remonstrant's theory, it would 
be an " abuse of power " to impeach or " address " them 
oif the bench ! Suppose a judge by great private immo- 
rality incurs utter contempt, — is drunk every day in the 
week except Probate Court day, — shall he, because he is 
cunning enough to evade statutes, still hide himself under 
the ermine ? Suppose a Judge of Probate should open 
his court on the days prescribed by the statute, and close 
it in half an hour, as your Judge Loring did when he shut 
up the Probate Court of Suffolk on Monday, the 29th of 
May, to hurry forward the kidnapping of Anthony Burns. 
Suppose some judge should thus keep his court open only 
five minutes each probate day the whole year through. 
He violates no statute, though he puts a stop to all busi- 
ness ; yet, according to the arguments of the press and the 
remonstrant, it would be a gross abuse of power to impeach 

12 



178 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

him, or address the Governor for his removal, since he has 
violated no law ! 

Not such was the good old doctrine. In the Prescott 
case. Judge Shaw went so far as to contend' that a judge 
might not only he removed by address, but impeached 

" for misconduct and mal-administration in office, 

of such a nature tliat the ordinary tribunals would not 
take notice of or punish them, in their usual course of pro- 
ceedings, and according to the laws of the land, and for 
wliich, therefore, the offender would not be indictable." 
(Prescott's Case, p. 180.) 

You may think. Gentlemen, that I have occupied too 
much time in proving the unlimited extent of your power. 
But it seemed necessary, since the press which defends the 
remonstrant, and he also, though they do not in words 
deny your unhmited autliorlty, do so in effect. They 
claim that you destroy the independence of the bench, 
and abuse your power, if you exercise it in any case but a 
clear violation of law. This is a practical annihilation of 
the power. This claim loses sight of the very nature and 
intent of the power, which is well stated by Mr. Austin, 
when he says that a judge who has lost the confidence 
of the community ought to be removed, though you can 
prove no specific charges against him, — though he may 
have violated no law, written or unwritten. Or, in words 
said to have been used by Mr. Rufus Choate in a recent 
case, " A judicial officer may be removed if found in- 
tellectually incapable, or if he has been left to commit 
some great enormity, so as to show liimself morally de- 
ranged." 

This unlimited power, then. Gentlemen, is one that you 
undoubtedly possess. It is one that the people deliber- 
ately planned and intended that you should possess. It is 
one wliich the nature of the government makes it neces- 
sary you should possess, and that, on fitting occasion, you 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 179 

should have the courage to use. True, it is a grave 
power. But what is all government but the exercise of 
grave powers ? " AVhen the sea is calm, all boats alike 
show mastership in floating." The merit of a government 
is, that it helps us in critical times. All tlie checks and 
ingenuity of our institutions are arranged to secure for us 
in these halls men wise and able enough to be trusted 
with grave powers, and bold enough to use them when 
the times require. Let not, then, this bugbear of the 
liability of this power to abuse, deter you from using it at 
all. Lancets and knives are dangerous instruments. The 
usefulness of surgeons is, that, when lancets are needed^ 
somebody may know how to use them and save life. 

Has, then, a proper case occurred for the exercise of 
this power ? In other words, ought you now to exercise 
it ? The petitioners think you ought, and for the follow- 
ing reasons. 

First. When Judge Loring issued his warrant in the 
Burns case, he acted in defiance of the solemn convictions 
and settled purpose of Massachusetts, — convictions and 
purpose oflScially made known to him, with all the solem- 
nity of a statute. 

In order to do him the fullest justice on this point, allow 
me to read a sentence from his remonstrance : — 

" And I respectfully submit, that when (while acting as a Com- 
missioner) I received my commission as Judge of Probate, no ob- 
jection was made by the Executive of the Commonwealth, or by any 
other branch of the government, to my further discharge of the 
duties of a Commissioner; nor at the passage of the act of 1850, 
when the jurisdiction aforesaid was given to the Commissioners 
of the Circuit Courts of the United States, nor at any time since, 
was I notified that the government of Massachusetts, or either 
the executive or legislative branch thereof, regarded the two 
offices as incompatible, or were of opinion that tlie same qualities 
and experience which were employed for the rights and interests 
of our own citizens should not be employed for the protection of 



180 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

all legal rights of alleged fugitives from service or labor under 
the United States act of 1850. 

" I make these latter remarks only for the purpose of bringing 
respectfully to the notice and clear apprehension of your honor- 
able bodies the extreme injustice and want of equity that would 
be involved in the removal of a judge from office, for the past 
discharge of other official duties, not by law made incompatible 
with his duties as judge, against his exercise of which no official 
objection had ever been raised, and which were created and im- 
posed on him by that law of the land wliich is the supreme law 
of Massachusetts." 

Gentlemen, this is a mere evasion. He was made 
Judge of Probate in 1847. He then knew, as well as you 
and I do, that Massachusetts did regard the conduct of any 
one of her magistrates in aiding in the return of a fugitive 
slave as something disgraceful and infamous. He had 
solemn and official intimation of this. My proof is the 
statute of March 24, 1843, entitled, " An Act further to 
protect personal liberty " : — 

" Sect. 1. No judge of m\y court of record of this Common- 
wealth, and no justice of the peace, shall hereafter take cogni- 
zance or grant a certificate in cases that may arise under the 
third section of an act of Congress, passed February twelfth, 
seventeen hundred and ninety-three, and entitled, ' An Act re- 
specting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the 
service of their masters,' to any person who claims any other 
person as a fugitive slave within the jurisdiction of the Common- 
wealth. 

" Sect. 2. No sheriff, deputy sheriff, coroner, constable, jailer, 
or other officer of this Commonwealth shall hereafter arrest or 
detain, or aid in the arrest or detention or imprisonment, in any 
jail or other building belonging to this Commonwealth, or to any 
county, city, or town thereof, of any person, for the reason that 
he is claimed as a fugitive slave. 

" Sect. 3. Any justice of the peace, sheriff, deputy sheriff, 
coroner, constable, or jailer, who shall offend against the provis- 
ions of this law, by in any way acting, directly or indirectly 



Removal of judge loring. 181 

under the power conferred by the third section of the act of Con- 
gress aforementioned, shall forfeit a sum not exceeding one thou- 
sand dollars for every such offence, to the use of the county where 
said offence is committed, or shall be subject to imprisonment not 
exceeding one year in the county jail." (Approved, March 24, 
1843.) 

The intent of that statute is clear and unmistakable. 
It expresses the determined will of the Commonwealth, 
that no magistrate of hers shall accept from the United 
States any authority, or take any part, directly or in- 
directly, in returning fugitive slaves to their masters. It 
means to set a stigma on slave-catchino; in this Common- 
wealth. It thunders forth its command, that no ofHcer 
shall hold the broad seal of the State in one hand, and 
reach forth the other for a slave-catcher's fee. This is 
the heart and gist of the statute. He that runneth may 
read. 

Technically construed, it may be said only to forbid 
that a judge, acting as a judge, should issue a slave war- 
rant ; and it may be claimed that Mr. Loring did not 
transgress it, since he issued his warrant, not as a judge, 
but as a slave commissioner. Technically speaking, this 
may be so, and an inferior court of justice would be bound 
so to regard it. But you are not sitting as nisi prius 
lawyers, bound by quiddling technicalities ; you are states- 
men, looking with plain, manly sense at the essence of 
things. Have you any doubt what Massachusetts in- 
tended when she enacted that statute ? Have you any 
doubt that Mr. Lorins^ knew what Massachusetts meant ? 
Why does the Constitution give you this power of remov- 
ing judges by address ? To meet just such cases as this ; 
when some individual has violated the spirit and essence 
of a law, but cannot be technically held by impeachments. 
Remember what Mr. Austin says, describing just this case 
in the extract I have twice quoted from his speech in the 



182 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

Convention. If you allow yourselves to be diverted from 
the exercise of the power by such technicalities, you forget 
the very purpose for which it was given, and practically 
annihilate it. 

It is not true, then, as Mr. Loring claims, that, when he 
received his commission, " no objection was made by the 
Executive of the Commonwealth, or of any other branch 
of the government, to his further discharge of the duties 
of a Commissioner," — meaning the duty of catching slaves. 
The statute of 1843, then in full force and effect, was 
clear and official notice to him what "objection" the 
Commonwealth had to the returning of slaves. 

But it is said the statute was passed in 1843, and only 
prohibited officers from acting under the slave act of 1793 ; 
it cannot have any reference to the slave act of 1850, since 
this was not in existence in 1843, and Mr. Loring's action 
in the Burns case was under the act of 1850. 

This is another technical evasion, but not as good even 
as the first ; because, in the Sims case, (7 Cushing, 285,) 
which Mr. Loring cites. Judge Shaw liolds the act of 1850 
constitutional, because it is so p-ecisely like the act of 1793 ; 
and Mr. Loring, in his Burns judgment, takes tlie same 
view. Now, if the two acts are so precisely alike that the 
constitutionality of one proves the constitutionality of the 
other, then they are such twins as to be both within the 
meaning and intent of our statute of 1843. 

When the counsel of Sims and Burns wished to argue 
the unconstitutionality of the act of 1850, on the ground 
that it went far beyond anything judicially recognized in 
the act of 1793, then Judges Shaw and Loring find the 
two acts so much alike that the argument is unnecessary. 
When Mr.* Loring's friends would defend him, then these 
two acts are so different, that our law of 1843 can apply 
only to the first ! To plunge an innocent and free man like 
Burns into slavery, against law and evidence, these stat- 



KEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 183 

ntes are just alike ; to save Judge Loving from the act 
of 1843, they are different as white and black ! * 

But even this technicality is of no avail. The official 
action of the State has forever closed this door of escape. 

While Congress was discussing the Fugitive Slave Bill, 
which was finally passed September 18, 1850, our Legis- 
lature passed the following resolutions, which the Gov- 
ernor approved. May 1, 1850 : — 

" Resolved, That the sentiments of the people of Massachusetts, 
as expressed in their legal enactments, in relation to the deliver- 
ing up of fugitive slaves, remain unchanged ; and inasmuch as 
the legislation necessary to give effect to the clause of the Con- 
stitution relative to this subject is within the exclusive jurisdic- 
tion of Congress, we hold it to be the duty of that body to pass 
such laws only in regard thereto as will be sustained by the 
pubhc sept^ment of the Free States, where such laws are to be 
enforced, su-d which shall especially secure to all persons, whose 
surrender may be claimed as having escaped from labor and ser- 
vice in ether States, the right of having the validity of such claim 
determined by a jury in the State where such claim is made. 

" Resolved, That the people of Massachusetts, in the mainte- 
nance of these their well-known and invincible principles, expect 
that all their officers and representatives will adhere to them at 
all times, on all occasions, and under all circumstances." (Ap- 
proved, May 1, 1850.) 

* I mio-ht have puslied this argument further. The act of 1 850 is styled 
« An Act to am&id, and supplementary to, tlie Act entitled ' An Act respect- 
injr Fugitives/ &c., approved Feb. 12, 1793." It is, then, properly a part 
of the act of 1793, and acting under it is not only substantially within the 
prohibition of our statute of 1843, but perhaps is, in strict law, included in 
that prohibition. At any rate, how do the" statutes of 1793 and 1850 dilTer ■» 
In 1 793, Corwrress enacted that certain State officers should be ex officio slave- 
catchers. Massachusetts, in 1843, forbade her magistrates to accept the au- 
thority. In 1850, Congress makes it necessary that a man should have a 
separate commission to entitle him to catch slaves. Massachusetts reiterates 
her orders. In defiance of these. Judge Loring accepts a commission. Tg 
the Case not substantially within the meaning of the act of 1843 1 



184 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

Observe, tlie Commonwealth reaffirms the principle of 
her former legal enactments^ — thafr is, the act of 1843 ; 
and expects all her " officers to adhere to them at all times, 
on all occasions^ and under all circumstances.''^ 

What shall we say now to Mr. Loring's claim, that 
neither when he received the commission as Judo;e of 
Probate, nor at any tune since, was he notified " by the 
government of Massachusetts, or by the executive or 
legislative branch thereof," that slave-catching and bear- 
ing office under Massachusetts were incompatible ! Are 
not these resolutions substantially a re-enactment of the 
statute of 1843, distinctly applying to the Fugitive Slave 
Bill of 1850, and officially warning all officers that the 
State expected them to abstain from taking part in the 
execution of that act, as much as of the act of 1793 ? 

Look at the case, Gentlemen. A sovereign State issues 
her mandate, that no magistrate of hers shall aid in catch- 
ing slaves. Seven years later, she solemnly reiterates the 
order, and directs her officers to remember it on all occa- 
sions. In open, contemptuous defiance of all this, one of 
her judges adjourns his own court to hold one that dooms 
a man to bondage. The Legislature meet and talk of re- 
moving him. But the judge, in a tone of indignant inno- 
cence, exclaims : " What ! turn me out for a mere differ- 
ence of opinion ! Have I not evaded the law ? If you 
remove such an innocent and law-abiding judge as I am, 
you will destroy the independence of the bench ! " Yes, 
truly ; that sort of independence which consists in defying 
the State in order to serve a party, or minister to the 
ambition of friends. 

Some men allege that the same reasoning would con- 
demn Judge Shaw for refusing to set Sims free, by habeas 
corpus^ from the grasp of the claimant. But surely he 
must be stone blind who sees no difference between a judge 
like Shaw, who, thinking he has no power to arrest 'the 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 185 

Slave Act when once set in motion, refuses to interfere, 
and a judge like Loring, who actually sets the Slave Act 
m motion, and personally executes it ! The statute of 
1843 only orders our officers not to aid in catching slaves. 
It does not order them to prevent everybody else from 
catching slaves. Loring actually hunted a slave, and sent 
him to Virginia. Shaw only declared himself unauthorized 
to prevent George T. Curtis from hunting fugitive slaves. 
Surely, there is some slight difference here. 

In consenting, then, to act as a Slave Commissioner, 
while holding the office of a Probate Judge, Mr. Loring 
defied the well-known, settled, religious convictions of the 
State, officially made known to him. The question was 
one of vital, practical morality of the gravest importance ; 
one where justice was on one side and infamy on the 
other. He cannot complain if you consider this heedless 
or heartless choice of the infamous side, this open de- 
fiance, on so momentous a matter, sufficient cause for his 
removal. 

My second reason is, that the very method of the trial 
of Anthony Burns shows Mr. Loring unfit to be continued 
lono;er on the bench. I am not now dealing with the 
point that he did act ; I have said that his mere acting in 
the case was a defiance of the Commonwealth ; but I 
now say, that the mamier of his acting is another ground 
for which he ought to be removed, and shows him to be 
unfit for the oflice of a judge. 

Anthony Burns was arrested at eight o'clock on Wed- 
nesday evening. He was hurried to the court-house, 
and concealed there within four walls. He was not al- 
lowed to see anybody but the slave claimant, the Marshal, 
and the police. At nine o'clock on Thursday morning, 
our Judge of Probate, Mr. Edward G. Loring, the Slave 
Commissioner, appeared in his court-room, with the slave 
claimant and his witnesses, the alleged fugitive, the Mar- 



186 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

shal, and the police. He proceeded to trial. Trembling, 
ignorant, confused, astounded, frlepdless, not knowing 
what to say or where to look, that unhappy man. Burns, 
sat, handcuffed, w^ith a policeman on each side. The 
Commissioner proceeded to try him. By accident, Mr. 
Richard H. Dana, Jr. had heard that such a trial was. to 
be held, and had reached the court-room. By accident, 
another learned counsel, who sits by my side (Charles M. 
Ellis, Esq.), heard that such a scene was enacting, and 
hurried to the court-house. I heard of it in the street. 
Mr. Theodore Parker was notified, and we went to the 
court-room. We found Robert Morris, Esq., already 
there. Mr. Morris, a member of the bar, had attempted 
to speak to Burns, — the policemen forbade him. The 
melancholy farce had proceeded for about half an hour. 
In two hours more, so far as any one could then see, the 
judgment would have been given, the certificate signed, 
the victim beyond our reach. There sat the Judge of 
Probate, clothed with the ermine of Massachusetts ; be- 
fore him cowered the helpless object of cniel legislation, 
— the crushed victim of an inhuman system. Mr. Dana 
had moved the court before to defer the trial ; but the 
Commissioner proceeded to examine the witness. After a 
short time, Mr. Dana rose, (he had no right to rise, 
technically speaking, — he rose as a citizen merely, not as 
counsel,) and I read you what he said : — 

" May it please your Honor : I rise to address the court as 
amicus curice, for I caunot say that I am regularly of counsel for 
the person at the bar. Indeed, from the few words I have been 
enabled to hold ^^dth him, and from what I can learn from others 
who have talked with him, I am satisfied that lie is not in a 
condition to determine whether he will have counsel or not, or 
whether or not and how he shall appear for his defence. He 
declines to say whether any one shall appear for him, or whetlier 
ne will defend or not. 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 187 

"Under these circumstances, I submit to your Honor's judg- 
ment, that time should be allowed to the prisoner to recover him- 
self from the stupefaction of liis sudden arrest, and Ills novel and 
distressing situation, and have opportunity to consult with friends 
and members of the bar, and determine what course he will pur- 
sue 

" He does not know what he is sajdng. I say to your Honor, 
as a member of the bar, on my personal responsibility, that from 
what I have seen of the man, and what I have learnt from others 
who have seen him, that he is not in a fit state to decide for him- 
self what he will do. He has just been arrested and brought into 
this scene, with tliis immense stake of freedom or slavery for life 
at issue, surrounded by strangers, — and even if he should plead 
guilty to the claim, the court ought not to receive the plea under 
such circumstances. 

" It is but yesterday that the court at the other end of the 
building refused to receive a plea of guilty from a prisoner. The 
court never will receive this plea in a capital case, without the 
fullest proof that the prisoner makes it deliberately, and under- 
stands its meaning and his own situation, and has consulted with 
his friends. In a case involving freedom or slavery for life, this 
court will not do less 

" I know enough of tliis tribunal to know that it will not lend 
(tself to the hrn'rying off a man into slavery to accommodate any 
man's personal convenience, before he has even time to recover 
his stupefied faculties, and say whether he has a defence or not. 
Even without a suggestion from an amicus curlce, the court would, 
of its own motion, see to it that no such advantage was taken. 

" The counsel for the claimant says, that, if the man were out 
of his mind, he would not object. Out of his mind ! Please your 
Honor, if you had ever reason to fear that a prisoner was not in 
full possession of his mind, you would fear it in such a case as 
this. But I have said enough. I am confident your Honor will 
not decide so momentous an issue against a man without counsel 
and without opportunity." 

Again, in his argument, alluding to the same scene, Mr. 
Dana says ; — 



188 BEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

" Bums was arrested suddenly, on a false pretence, coming 
home at nightfall from his day's work, and hurried into custody, 
among strange men, in a strange place, and suddenly, whether 
claimed rightfully or claimed wrongfully, he saw he was claimed 
as a slave, and his condition burst upon him in a flood of terror. 
This was at night. You sav/ him, Sir, the next day, and you 
remember the state he was then in. You remember his stupefied 
and terrified condition. You remember his hesitation, his timid 
glance about the room, even when looking in the mild face of 
justice. How little your kind words reassured him. Sir, the 
day after the arrest, you felt obhged to put off his trial two days, 
because he was not in a condition to know or decide what he 
would do." 

Mr. Ellis rose also, and protested against the trial. 
Gentlemen, what a scene ! A man clothed in the ermine 
of Massachusetts has before him a helpless man, — in the 
words of Mr. Dana, "terrified, stupefied, intimidated," — 
and begins to try him. If the Chief Justice of the Com- 
monw^ealth should find the veriest vagrant from the 
streets indicted for murder by twenty-three jurors, and 
solemnly and legally set before him, he would not take 
upon himself to proceed to trial without the man had 
counsel, — every lawyer knows this. And yet this man, 
who ought to have shown the discretion and humanity of 
a judge, was proceeding in a trial so enormous and fear- 
ful, that counsel coming in by accident felt urged to rise 
in their places and interrupt him, protesting, as citizens of 
Massachusetts, that this mockery of justice should not go 
on. You have a Judge of Probate who needs to have 
accident fill his court-room wdth honest men, to call him 
back to his duty. The petitioners say that sucli a man is 
not fit to sit upon the Bench of Massachusetts. Do we 
exaggerate the importance of the occasion ? Let me read 
a single sentence from Dr. Channing : — 

" This Constitution was not established to send back slaves to 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 189 

cliains. The article requiring this act of the Free States wag 
forced on tljem by the circumstances of the times, and submitted 
to as a hard necessity. It did not enter into the essence of the 
instrument ; whilst the security of freedom was its great, living, 
all-pervading idea. We see the tendency of slavery to warp the 
Constitution to its purposes, in the law for restoring the flying 
bondman. Under this, not a few, having not only the same nat- 
ural but legal rights with ourselves, have been subjected to the 
lash of the overseer. 

" But a higher law than the Constitution protests against the 
act of Congress on this point. According to the law of nature, 
no greater crime against a human being can be committed than 
to make him a slave 

" To condemn a man to perpetual slavery is as solemn a sen- 
tence as to condemn him to death. Before being thus doomed, 
he has a right to all the means of defence which are granted to a 
man who is tried for his life. All the rules, forms, solemnities, 
by which innocence is secured from being confounded with guilt, 
he has a right to demand. In the present case, the principle is 
eminently applicable, that many guilty should escape, rather than 
that one innocent man should suffer ; because the guilt of running 
away from an * owner ' is of too faint a color to be seen by some 
of the best eyes, whilst that of enslaving the free is of the darkest 
hue." 

Dr. Channing would have all the forms and solemnities 
of justice, usual in cases where life hangs on the issue, 
rigidly observed, when a slave case is to be determined. 
Your Judge of Probate arrests a man at night; no one 
knows of it; at the earliest hour in the morning that a 
court ever sits, he opens his court; this poor, trembling, 
friendless victim, who hardly dared to look up and meet 
his eye, is brought before him, and he proceeds to try 
him. Strangers come in and say, he is too stupefied to be 
tried. Still the judge goes on, and they sit awhile, their 
blood boihng within them, till they feel compelled to rise, 
and solemnly protest against this insult to all the forms of 



190 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

justice ; and the court, after the repeated protests of two 
members of the bar, at length consents to put off that trial, 
allow the unhappy man to recover himself, consult with 
friends, and decide what course to pursue. 

Why, Gentlemen, if a man has committed murder, and 
has been indicted by a jury, the statute provides that he 
shall have time allowed him to prepare for his defence, 
have a copy of his indictment, and a list of the witnesses 
against him ; and when it is all done, the Supreme Court 
would not touch the case until they had assigned him 
counsel. They would fear to draggle their ermine in 
blood. But here is a Massachusetts Judge of Probate with 
whom it is but the accident of an accident, but the impu- 
dence of counsel, so to speak, that prevents such an 
outrage as Mr. Dana's protest describes. Now, your peti- 
tioners ask, in the name of Massachusetts, for a judge 
who can be safely trusted in a private chamber with an 
innocent man. 

I recall the scene in that court-room, while our hope 
that the judge would postpone that case hung trembling 
in the balance. We were none of us sure that even the 
indignant, unintermitted protests of these members of the 
bar would secure the postponement of that trial. Think 
of the difference in this case ! You are trying Mr. Loring 
for continuance in his office. He comes here with all the 
advantages of education, wealth, social position, profes- 
sional discipline, everything on his side, and can choose 
when he will be tried. Around him are troops of friends. 
Influential journals defend his rights. But that poor vic- 
tim — what a contrast! According to Dr. Channing, it 
was as much as life that hung in the balance. The old 
English law says that the judge is counsel for the prison- 
ers. There were no such promptings here as led the 
judge to say, " I shall not try that man unless he has 
counsel, and all the safeguards and checks of a judicial 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 191 

examination/' The hapless victim, too ignorant at the 
best to know his own rights or how to defend them, was 
then stunned by tlie overwhehning blow, — by the arrest, 
and the sight of the horrible pit into which he was to Le 
plnnged. Over his prostrate body this Massachusetts 
judge of the fatherless and widow opens his court, and 
begins to hold the mockery of a trial ! If you conihiue 
him in office, you should appoint some one, — some "flap- 
per," as Dean Swift says, — some humane man, to wait 
upon his court, and for the honor of the State remind 
him when it will be but decent to remember justice and 
mercy, for he is not fit to go alone. 

Do you ask us what course Mr. Loring should have 
adopted ? We answer, the same course that any merely 
decent judge would adopt in such a case. Here was a 
man arrested some twelve hours before on a false pre- 
tence, and kept shut up from all his friends. All this 
Mr. Loring knew, or was bound to know, since such has 
been the constant practice in all slave cases, here and else- 
where. The first duty of a just judge was to tell the 
man, truly and plainly, what he was arrested for, — see 
that his friends had free access to him, and fix some future 
day to commence his trial, leaving time sufficient to con- 
sult and prepare a defence. This is what the statutes of 
every civilized state ordain, in cases where even ten dol- 
lars are in dispute. The first word that William Brent, 
the witness, was allowed to speak on the stand in such cir- 
cumstances was the death-knell to any claim Mr. Loring 
might have to be thought a humane man, a good lawyer, 
or a just judge. A statute which the whole civilized 
world regards as the most infamous on record is executed 
by men who claim to be lawyers, judges, and Christians, 
with a violence and haste which doubles its mischief. 
These slave commissioners, while constantly prating of 
the "painful duty" their allegiance to law entails on them. 



192 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

contrive to add by tlieir haste to the brutality and cruelty 
even of the Slave Act. Knowing the* cruel nature of the 
statute he was executing, and the routine of lies and close 
confinement always found in slave cases, Mr. Loring's first 
duty, after his court was open, was to adjourn it for three 
days, at least, taking measures that Burns should mean- 
time see friends and counsel, to consult on his defence. 
All Mr. Loring's friends can say for him is, that he was 
only acting as all other slave commissioners act, and that 
no harm was done, since the Abolitionists came in and 
secured Burns a trial ! As if the infamous slave-prisons 
of Curtis and Ingraham were precedents for any court to 
follow ! As if any man was proved fit to be a judge by 
alleging that strangers prevented his doing all the mischief 
he intended ! 

The case was adjourned to Saturday. 

Where do we next meet this specimen of Massachusetts 
humanity and judicial decorum ? 

It was necessary some one should see Burns to ar- 
rancre for his having counsel. The United States Mar- 
shal refused us admission to the cell. On Friday I 
went to Mr. Loring at Cambridge, where he was Law 
Lecturer in Harvard College, and asked him for an 
order directing the Marshal to allow me to see the 
prisoner. He sits down and writes a letter, authoriz- 
ing me to cross that barrier and see Burns ; and as he 
hands it to me, he says : " Mr. Phillips, the case is so 
clear, that I do not think you will be justified in placing 
any obstacles in the way of this man's going back, as he 
PROBABLY will"!! What right bad he to think Burns 
would go back ? He had heard only one witness ; yet he 
says, " TJie case is so clear ^ that I do not think you will be 
justified in placing any obstacles in the way of this man^s 
going hack, as he probably will " ! ! ! 

Suppose, Mr. Chairman, that, in the case of Dr. Web- 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 193 

ster, after lie had been indicted, but before he had been 
put on trial, the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth had 
said to Mr. Sohier, or any other of the counsel : " Sir, I 
do not think you will be justified in placing any obstacles 
in the way of this man's being hung, as he probably will!'''* 
What would be thought of the judge who should proceed 
to try a man for his life, after expressing such an opinion 
on the case to be brouo;ht before him ? Yet such was the 
mood of mind of this Judge of Probate, that, without 
hearing argument oi ' testimony, — only the disjointed story 
of a single witness, interrupted by the protests of Messrs. 
Dana and Ellis, — the mere disjecta membra of a trial, — 
nothing, — ho had so far made up his mind, that he could 
warn me from attempting to do anythmg to save the man 
from the doom to which he was devoted, on the ground of 
the probability of his being given up ! "A judge who 
proceeds on half evidence will not do quarter justice," says 
an old English essayist. What proportion, then, of jus- 
tice may we expect from a judge who decides on no 
evidence at all? 

I ask (I was going to say) the judges of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, — men of fair fame and judicial 
reputation, — whether a person of that temper of mind is 
fit to sit by their side ? I ask any man who loves the 
honor of the Bench, who desires to see none but hi^h- 
minded, conscientious, humane, just judges, whether the 
petitioners who ask for the removal of such an individual 
are attacking or supporting the honor of the Bench of 
Massachusetts, — its real strength and independence ? It 
seems to me that we are cutting off a corrupt member, 
and securing for the rest the only source of strength, the 
confidence of the Commonwealth. The Bench is not 
weakened when we remove a bad judge, but when wo 
retain him. 

Gentlemen, it is not in the power of this Legislature - • 

13 



194 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

respectfully be it said — it is not in the power of this 
Legislature to command the respect of this Common- 
wealth for a Bench on which sits Edward Greely Loring. 
You may refuse to remove him ; but you cannot make the 
people respect a Bench upon which he sits. If any man 
here loves the judiciary, and wishes to secure its indepen- 
dence and its influence with the peopk, let him aid us to 
cut off the offending; member. 

Thirdly. Gentlemen, where is your Judge next heard 
of? He is next heard of at midnight, on Saturday, the 
27th of May, drawing up a bill of sale of Anthony 
Bums, which now exists in his own handwriting ! Be- 
fore the trial was begun, he sits down and writes a bill 
of sale : — 

" Know all men by these presents, — That I, Charles F. Suttle, 
of Alexandria, in Virginia, in consideration of twelve hundred 
dollars, to me paid, do hereby release and discharge, quitclaim 
and convey to Antony Byrnes, his liberty ; and I hereby manu- 
mit and release him from all claims and services to me forever, 
hereby giving him his liberty to all intents and effects forever. 

" In testimony whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, 
this twenty-seventh day of May, in the year of our Lord eighteen 
hundred and fifty-four." 

Gentlemen, suppose, while Dr. Webster sat in the dock, 
before the trial commenced, Chief Justice Shaw had sum- 
moned Mrs. Webster to his side, and said, " I advise you 
to get a petition to the Governor to have your husband 
pardoned; I think he will be found guilty!" Why, he 
would have been scouted from one end of the Common- 
wealth to the other. Suppose a deed of land was in 
dispute, and before the case began, the judge should call 
one of the claimants before him and say, " I advise you to 
compromise this matter, for I think your deed is not worth 
a straw I " Who would trust his case to such a judge ? 
But here is a man put before a judge to be tried on an 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 195 

issue wliich Dr. Clianning says is as solemn as that of life 
or death, and the judge is found at midnight, with the 
pregnant intimation that that man must be bought, or he 
is not safe ! What right had he to say that ? Mr. Chair • 
man, the case may have been so clear even then, before it 
was half begun, that every man in the Commonwealth, 
save one, would have been obliged to say that Burns was 
a fugitive ; but there was one pair of lips that honor and 
official propriety ought to have sealed, and those were the 
lips of the judge who was trying the case. Yet he is the 
very man who is found babbling ! He seemed to be utterly 
lost tg all the proprieties of his position. Colonel Suttle 
selling Burns on the 27th of May ! What even legal right 
in Burns had Colonel Suttle then to convey ? None. No 
law knew of any. Yet the very judge trying the case vol- 
unteers to suppose a title based on his own decision, which 
ought then to have been unknown, even to himself. Suf- 
folk Court-House is turned into a slave-auction block ; 
and the Slave Commissioner, the trial hardly commenced, 
jumps upon the stand, —not needing to lay aside what- 
ever judicial robes a Slave Commissioner may be supposed 
to wear ! 

Fourthly. The Commissioner knew how general was 
the opinion among lawyers, that a writ of replevin might 
be served after his judgment and before the affidavit of 
the claimant was made. He knew the anxiety of the 
friends of Burns to test the possibility of thus legally se- 
curing his release by Massachusetts law. But in the Com- 
missioner's hot haste and obstinate determination to have 
every law except those of this Commonwealth obeyed to 
the letter, he arranged and conspired with Colonel Suttle 
and the United States Marshal to have all the papers exe- 
cuted in such secrecy, and so exactly at the same moment, 
as to deprive Burns of all chance from this measure. 
How eminently worthy such plotting as this of a JVIassa* 



chusetts judge ! — of one who assures you that he has 
scrupulously obeyed the laws of Massachusetts! 

Well, Gentlemen, it is said, — I cannot state it on any 
thing but rumor, — that, as the crowning act of his unju- 
dicial conduct, he commimicated his decision to one party 
twenty hours before ho communicated it to the other, so 
that Messrs. Smith, Hallett, Thomas, Suttle, & Co. had 
time to send down into Dock Square and have bullets cast 
for the soldiers who were to be employed to assist the 
slave-hunter; had time to inform the newspapers in the 
city what they intended to do ; — while Messrs. Dana and 
Ellis, counsel for the prisoner, were allowed to go to their 
homes in utter ig-norance whether that decision would be 
one way or another. Where can you find, in the whole 
catalogue of judicial enormities, an instance when a judge 
revealed his decision to one party and concealed it from 
the other ? If he thought it necessary, on any grounds of 
public security or from private reasons of propriety, to 
inform them what his decision was to be, he should have 
said : " Gentleman, I can meet you only in open court, 
in the presence of counsel on both sides. I cannot speak 
to you, Mr. Thomas, unless Mr. Dana or Mr. Ellis is 
here. Call them, and then I will tell you what my decis- 
ion is to be." At four o'clock on Thursday, the Com- 
missioner made known his decision to the slave-claimant's 
counsel ; on Friday, at nine o'clock, to Messrs. Dana and 
Ellis, and the world I ! 

What a picture ! Put aside that it was a slave case ; 
forget, if you will, for a moment, that he was committing 
an act which the Commonwealth says is z}:>so facto infa- 
mous, and declares that no man shall do it and hold office. 
The old law of Scotland declared that a butcher should 
not sit upon a jury ; he was incapacitated by his profession. 
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, by the statute of 
1843, says that any Slave Commissioner is unfit to sit 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 197 

upon the bench. Mr. Loring cannot see it, although It 
was written and signed, re-enacted and signed again, — 
although he was doing an act which the butchers of our 
city, to their honor be it said, would not sanction, two 
days afterwards. He puts this man into a room, bewil- 
dered, terrified, unfriended, — so unfit for trial, that stran- 
gers deem it their duty repeatedly to protest against the 
proceedings of the court. Having gone through that 
mockery of half an hour's trial, he takes occasion to ex- 
press his deliberate opinion of what the result is to be to 
counsel. Having done that, he makes his conduct still 
more flagrant by drawing up a bill of sale of the man who 
was still on trial before him. There was but one man in 
the State of Massachusetts who could not have drawn that 
bill of sale, as I before said ; yet Tie was the man to draw 
it ! After that, he proceeds to collogue, to conspire, with 
one party, and tell them his decision, twenty hours before 
he informs the other. Gentlemen, I submit to you, as a 
citizen of Massachusetts, that this is conduct unfitting for 
the bench ; that there is, not to speak of inhumanity, an 
utter unfitness to try questions of any kind, an utter reck- 
lessness of judicial character and regard for propriety in 
such conduct, which might cause the very stones in the 
street to rise and plead for the majesty of the laws against 
such a judge. The petitioners say to you, that such a 
man is not fit to wear the ermine of the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts. Do they say too much ? I am to die 
in this city ; many of the petitioners are to die here. Our 
wills are to go into his hands. Our children and widows 
are to go before him. We cannot trust him ; and we ask 
you to remove him, imder that provision of the Constitu- 
tion which gives you unlimited power to remove a judge 
who is unfit for the duties of his office. 

It is not necessary, Mr. Chairman, that I detain you 
long on the charge that Mr. Loring " wrested the law t# 



198 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

the support of injustice, tortured evidence to help the 
strong against the weak, and administered a merciless 
statute in a merciless manner." You liave in your hands 
the able arguments of Messrs. Ellis and Dana, as well as 
that remarkable " Decision which Judge Loring might 
have given," originally published in the Boston Atlas. 
These make it needless for me to enlarge on the law 
points. Allow me, however, a few brief remarks. 

1st. To use my own statement prepared for another 
occasion, " the Fugitive Slave Act leaves the party claim- 
ant his choice between two processes ; one under its sixth 
section ; the other under the tenth. 

" The sixth section obliges the claimant to prove three 
points : (1.) that the person claimed owes service ; (2.) 
that he has escaped ; and, (3.) that the party before the 
court is the identical one alleged to be a slave. 

*' The tenth section makes the claimant's certificate con- 
clusive as to the first two points, and only leaves the iden- 
tity to he proved. 

" In this case, the claimant, by offering proof of service 
and escape, made his election of the sixth section. 

" Here he failed, — failed to prove service, failed to 
prove escape. Then the Commissioner allowed him to 
swing round and take refuge in the tenth, leaving iden- 
tity only to be proved ; and this he proved by the pris- 
oner's confession, made in terror, if at all ; wholly denied 
by him, and proved only by the testimony of a witness 
of whom we know nothing, but that he was contradicted 
by several witnesses as to the only point to which he 
Affirmed, capable of being tested." 

2d. As to the point of identity. Colonel Suttle proved 
that the person at the bar was his Anthony Burns by the 
testimony of one witness. Of this witness, it may be em- 
phatically said, we knew nothing. He was never in the 
State before, and we hope he never will be again. Ha 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 199 

swore that Bums escaped from Richmond, March 24, 
1854. To contradict him, six witnesses volunteered their 
testimony. They were not sought out ; they came acci- 
dentally or otherwise into court, and offered, unsolicited, 
their testimony, that they had seen the man at the bar in 
Boston for three or four weeks before the day of alleged 
escape. These were witnesses of whose daily life and un- 
impeached character ample evidence existed. Everybody 
knew them. Six to one ! They were Boston mechan- 
ics and bookkeepers ; one a city policeman, one an officer 
in the regiment, and member of the Common Council. 
Surely, it was evident, either that the recoi;d was wrong, 
that the Virginia witness was wrong, or that this prisoner 
was not the man Colonel Suttle claimed as his slave.* Out 
of either door, there was chance for the judge to find his 
way to release Burns. At any rate, there was reasonable 
doubt, and the person claimed was therefore entitled to his 
release. But no ; Mr. Loring lets one unknown slave- 
hunter outweigh six well-known and honest men, tramples 
on the rule that in such cases all doubts are to be held 
in favor of the prisoner, and surrenders his victim to 
bondage. 

Observe, Gentlemen, in this connection, the exceeding 
importance of granting time to prepare for trial, the omis- 
sion of which, on the part of Mr. Loring, I have com- 
mented on. If this case had been finished on Thursday, 
as it would have been but for the interference of others, 
these witnesses would not have been heard of till after 
Burns Avas out of the State. But after the two efforts of 
his counsel had succeeded in getting delay till Monday, 
the facts of the case became known through the city, and, 

* After the surrender of Burns, it was discovered that the statements of 
these six witnesses were exactly correct. Bums came to Boston early in 
February, and Suttle's witness made a mistake of a month in the date of 
Burns's exit from Virginia. 



200 REM0V5fll^0F JUDGE LORING 

having heard them, these witnesses volunteered their tes- 
timony. Now, if the ascertaining of pertinent facts be the 
purpose of a trial, which it surely is in all courts, except 
those of slave commissioners, the consideration I have 
stated is a very important one. Though Mr. Loring chose 
to disregard this evidence, it was due to the law and to 
the satisfaction of the community, that, even in his court, 
it should be heard. 

3d. But as to the sole point to be proved, under the 
tenth section, identity, the evidence Mr. Loring rehes on 
is the confession of the poor victim when first arrested. 
No confession is admissible when made in terror. 

This confession was made at night ; and even twelve 
hours after, Mr. Loring was forced himself to admit that 
the prisoner was so stupefied and terrified, he was in no fit 
state to be tried. Yet he admitted his confessions made in 
a still more terrified hour ! The only witness, also, to this 
alleged confession, was this same unknown slave-hunter, 
unless we count one of the ruffians who guarded Burns. 

But if the confession be taken at all, the whole must be 
taken. Now, in this confession, sworn to by Colonel Sut- 
tle's own witness. Burns said he did not run away, but fell 
asleep on board a ship, where he was at work with his 
master's permission, and was brought away. This state- 
ment being brought in by Colonel Suttle's own witness, 
must be taken by this claimant as true. He cannot be 
allowed to doubt or contradict it. If it be true, then 
Burns was not a fugitive slave, and so not within the 
Fugitive Slave Law provisions. Our own Supreme Court 
has decided (see 7 Cushing, 298) that a slave on board a 
national vessel with his master, by express permission of 
the Navy Secretary, who had been landed in Boston in 
consequence of Navy orders, against the wish of the mas- 
ter, and of course by no action of the slave, could not be 
reclaimed. To be brought from a Slave State is no 



KEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 201 

escape, within the meaning of the law. If taken at all, 
the whole confession must be taken. If the whole be 
taken, then the claimant himself has proved that his 
alleged slave did not escape. If not taken in the whole, 
then it cannot be taken at all, not even under the tenth 
section, and then there is no evidence as to identity ; and 
the whole case falls to the ground. 

Surely somewhere among all these wide gaping chasms 
in the claimant's case, this poor judge, who pleads he was 
obliged to do infamous work and accept the case, might 
have found chance of escape, if he were a learned and 
humane man ! 

Mr. Lorins: contends that he was obliged to issue the 
warrant in consequence of the oath he took when ap- 
pointed Judge of Probate, to support the Constitution of 
the United States. He says : — 

" When I was appointed Judge of Probate, I was, by the au- 
thority of the people of Massachusetts, bound by an official oath 
to support the Constitution of the United States ; this is to be 
done only by fulfilling the provisions of the Constitution, and of 
those laws of the United States which are constitutionally made 
to carry the Constitution into effect. And on the authority of 
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, I confidently claim 
that, in my action under the United States Act of 1850, 1 exactly 
complied with the official oath imposed on me by the authority 
of the people of Massachusetts." 

A simple illustration will show the absurdity of this 
claim. If the " official oath " to the Constitution of the 
United States, which he says Massachusetts required him 
as Judge of Probate to take, really binds him to execute 
all the laws of the Union, in every capacity, then such 
execution becomes a part of his official duty^ since it was 
as a Judge of Probate, and only as such, that he took the 
" official oath." It follows, then, that if Marshal Freeman 
should direct Judge Lormg to aid in catching a slave, and 



202 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

he should re.\ise, the House of Representatives could im- 
peach him for official misconduct. I think no one but a 
Slave Commissioner will maintain that this is law. 

Mr. Lorina: contends that he was bound to issue the 
warrant, holding as he did the office of Commissioner ! 
Who obliged him to hold the office ? Could he not have 
resigned, as many — young Kane of Philadelphia, and 
others — did, when first the infamous act made it possible 
that he should be insulted by an application for such a 
warrant ? There was a time when all of us would have 
deemed such an application an insult to Edward G. Lo- 
ring. Could he not have resigned when the application 
was made, as Captain Hayes of our police did, when called 
on to aid in doing the very act which Mr. Loring had 
brought like a plague on the city ? Could he not have 
declined to issue the warrant or take part in the case, as 
B. F. Hallett was reported to have done in the case of 
William and Ellen Crafts? 

But whether he could or not matters not to you. Gen- 
tlemen. Massachusetts has a right to say what sort of 
men she will have on her bench. She does not complain 
if vile men will catch slaves. She only claims that they 
shall not, at the same time, be officers of hers. Mr. Lo- 
ring had his choice, to resign his judgeship or his commis- 
sionership. He chose to act as Commissioner, and, of 
course, took the risk of losing the other office whenever 
the State should rise to assert her laws. Nobody can 
complain that he is not allowed to hold a Probate Court 
one hour and a Slave Court the next. Certainly, it is not 
too much to claim for Massachusetts the poor right to say, 
that when the " legalized robber," " the felonious slave- 
trader," (these are Channing's words,) comes here, he 
shall not be able to select agents for his merciless work from 
those sitting on our bench and clothed in our ermine. 

One single line of this remonstrance goes far to show 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 203 

tlie hollowness of all the rest : " In this conviction, the 
Commissioners, ref using all pecuniary compensation^ have 
performed their duties to the Constitution and the law." 
If the " pieces of silver " are clean, and have no spot of 
blood, why do all our Commissioners refuse to touch them ? 
And why, when accused of executing this merciless stat- 
ute, (all men seem to think it an accusation,^ does each 
one uniformly plead in extenuation or atonement that he 
refused the fee ? Is it any real excuse for doing an in- 
famous act, that one did it for nothing ? There is some- 
thing strange in this. Ah, Gentlemen, not all the special 
pleading in the world, not *' all the perfumes of Arabia, 
can sweeten " that accursed gold. 

There is one paragraph in this remonstrance which de- 
serves notice, as showing either great ignorance or great 
heedlessness in one who claims to sit on a judicial bench. 
Mr. Loring says : — 

" In the year 1851, the Act of Congress of 1850 was declared, 
by the unanimous opinion of the Justices of the Supreme Judicial 
Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to be a constitu- 
tional law of the United States, passed by Congress in execution 
of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States, and 
as such the supreme law of Massachusetts (7 Cnsh. Rep. 285) ; 
and in exposition of the subject, after reference to the nature of 
the Constitution of the United States, as a compromise of mutual 
rights, creating mutual obligations and duties, it was declared 
(page 319): 'In this spirit and with these views steadily in 
prospect, it seems to be the duty of all judges and magistrates to 
expound and apply these provisions in the Constitution and laws 
of the United States, and in this spirit it behooves all persons 
bound to obey the laws of the United States to consider and re- 
gard them.' And this authoritative direction as to the duties of 
the magistrates and people of Massachusetts was given in direct 
reference to the fourth article of the Constitution of the United 
States, the United States A<Jt of 1850, and the laws of Massa- 
chusetts, as they then were and have ever since beeu." 



204 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORmO. 

Observe the language : " It was declared," by tlie 
court, of course, and it is an " authoritative direction as to 
the duties of magistrates." You conclude. Gentlemen, 
as every reader would, and would have a right to con- 
clude, that this sentence, quoted from the 319th page of 
Cushing's Reports, is part of a decision of our Supreme 
Court. Not at all, Gentlemen ; it is only a note to a de- 
cision, written, to be sure, by Judge Shaw, but on his 
private responsibility, and no more an "authoritative di- 
rection " to magistrates and people than any casual remark 
of Judge Shaw to his next-door neighbor as they stand 
too-ether on the sidewalk. In his decision in the Burns 
case, Mr. Loring refers to the Sims case, above cited, (7 
Gushing, 285,) "as the unanimous opinion of the judges 
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts," and then quotes 
this same sentence as part of the opinion, terming it " the 
wise words of our revered Chief Justice in that case." 
Could this important mistake, twice made, on solemn occa- 
sions, be mere inadvertence ? If he knew no better, he 
seems hardly fit for a judge. If any of his friends should 
claim he did know better, then, surely, he must have in- 
tended to deceive, and that does not much increase his 
fitness for the bench. 

Mr. Chairman, there is one view of the Burns case 
which has not, I believe, been suggested. It is this. 
Massachusetts declares that the fugitive slave is constitu- 
tionally entitled to a jury trial. It is the general conviction 
of the North. Mr. Webster had once prepared an amend- 
ment to the Fugitive Slave Act securing jury trial. A 
Commissioner of humane and just instincts would be 
careful, therefore, to remember that the present act, 
on the contrary, made him both judge and jury. Now 
does any man in the Commonwealth believe that a 
jury would have ever sent Burns into slavery with six 
witnesses against one as to his identity, and his confession 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 205 

as much in his favor as against him ? Mr. Loring knows, 
this day, that he sent into slavery a man whom no jury 
that could be impanelled in Massachusetts would have 
condemned. I might add, whom no judge but himself, 
now on our bench, would have condemned on the same 
evidence. 

The friends of Mr. Loring, in the streets, tell us it is 
hard to hold him accountable for this decision ; that all the 
world knows he did not make it, — powerful relatives and 
friends dictated it to him. Gentlemen, the apology seems 
worse even than our accusation. A man whose own heart 
does not lead him to be a slave-catcher allow himself to 
be made the tool of others for such business ! Besides, 
does this excuse prove him so very fit, after all, to sit on 
the Probate Bench ? What if he should allow able rela- 
tives to dictate his decisions there also ? 

Gentlemen, I have not enlarged, as I might have done, 
on the general principle that, without alleging special mis- 
conduct, the mere fact of Mr. Loring' s consenting to act 
at all as a Slave Commissioner is sufficient cause for his 
removal from the office of a Massachusetts judge. To con- 
sent actively to aid in hunting slaves here and now shows 
a hardness of heart, a merciless spirit, a moral blindness, an 
utter spiritual death, which totally unfit a man for the judi- 
cial office. No such man ought or can expect to preserve 
the confidence of the community, which is essential to 
his usefulness as a judge. Neither can Mr. Loring claim 
that he had not full warning such would be the case. To 
our shame we must confess, that the State has submitted 
to the execution of the Slave Act within her hmits. But, 
thank God ! we are justified in claiming that she submitted 
in sad, reluctant, sullen silence ; that while she offered no 
resistance to the law, as such, she proclaimed, in the face 
of the world, her loathing and detestation of a slave-hunter. 
In the words of Channing : — 



206 REMOVAL or JUDGE LORING. 

" The great difficulty in the way of the arrangement now pro- 
posed is the article of the Constitution requiring the surrender 
and return of fugitive slaves. A State, obeying this, seems to 
me to contract as gi*eat guilt as if it were to bring slaves from 
Africa. No man, who regards slavery as among the greatest 
wrongs, can in any way reduce his fellow-creatures to it. The 
flying slave asserts the first right of a man, and should meet aid 

rather than obstruction No man among its, ivho values his 

character, would aid the slave-hunter. The slave-hunter here 
woidd he looked on with as little favor as the felonious slave- 
trader. Those among us who dread to touch slavery in its own 
region, lest insurrection and tumults should follow change, still 
feel that the fugitive who has sought shelter so far can breed no 
tumult in the land which he has left, and that, of consequence, 
no motive but the unhallowed love of gain can prompt to his pur- 
suit; and when they think of slavery as perpetuated, not for 
public order, but for gain, they abhor it, and would not lift a 
finger to replace the flying bondsman beneath the yoke.'' 

The Legislature, the press, the pulpit, the voice of 
private life, every breeze that swept from Berkshire to 
Barnstable, spoke contempt for the hound who joined that 
merciless pack. Every man who touched the Fugitive 
Slave Act was shrunk from as a leper. Every one who de- 
nounced it was pressed to our hearts. Political sins were 
almost forgotten, if a man would but echo the deep relig- 
ious conviction of the State on this point. When Charles 
Sumner, himself a Commissioner, proclaimed beforehand 
his determination not to execute the Fuo;itive Slave Act, 
exclaiming, in Faneuil Hall, " I was a man before I was a 
Commissioner ! " all Massachusetts rose up to bless him, 
and say. Amen ! The other Slave Commissioner who 
burdens the city with his presence cannot be said to have 
lost the respect and confidence of the community, seeing 
he never had either. But slave-hunting was able to sink 
even him into a lower depth than he had before reached. 

The hunting of slaves is, then, a sufficient cause for 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 207 

removal from a Massachusetts bench. Indeed, I should 
bkish for the State if it were not so. I am williiio- this 
case should stand forever as a precedent. Let it be con- 
sidered as settled, tliat when a judge violates the well- 
known, mature, religious conviction of the State on a grave 
and vital question of practical morality, having had full 
warning, such violation shall be held sufficient cause for 
his removal. This principle will do no shadow of harm to 
the independence of the bench. Mr. Chairman, as I have 
before remarked, the bench is weakened when we retain a 
bad judge, not when we remove him. 

I am glad that the facts of this case are such that we 
can remove Mr. Loring without violating in the least tittle 
the proper independence of the judiciary ; that Massachu- 
setts can fix the seal of her detestation on the Slave Act 
by so solemn a deed, without danger to her civil polity. 
But, Mr. Chairman, I frankly confess that, if the case had 
been otherwise, if it had been necessary to choose between 
two alternatives, (while I value as highly as any man can 
an independent judge,) better, far better, in my opinion, 
to have for judges dependent honest men, than indepen- 
dent slave-catchers. 

Dr. Channing, sitting in his study, says that "no man 
among us who values his character would aid the slave- 
hunter." We ask you to remove from judicial office the 
man who has done it, — done it unnecessarily, done it in hot 
haste, done it against law. We ask you not to have slave- 
hunters on the bench of our old Commonwealth. Read 
ChanniQg's last, dying words : — 

" There is something worse than to be a slave. It is to make 
other men slaves. Better be trampled in the dust than trample 
on a fellow-creature. Much as I shrink from the evils inflicted 
by bondage on the millions who bear it, I would sooner endure 
them than inflict them on a brother. Freemen of the moun- 
tains ! as far as you have power, remove from yourselves, from 



^XJO REM0VAU4JFJUDGE LORING. 

our dear and venerable mother, the Commoo wealth of Massachu- 
setts, and from all the Free States, the baseness and guilt of 
ministering to slavery, of acting as the slaveholder's police, of 

lending him arms and strength to secure his victim 

Should a slave-hunter ever profane these mountainous retreats by 
seeking here a flying bondman, regard him as a legalized robber. 
Oppose no force to him ; you need not do it. Your contempt 
and indignation will be enough to disarm the * man-stealer ' of 
the unlioly power conferred on him by unrighteous laws." 

This is the picture of a slave-hunter, which a dispas- 
sionate man leaves as his legacy to his fellow-citizens. 
Gentlemen, we assert that such a man is not fit to sit upon 
the bench. We have a right to claim that you shall give 
us honorable, just, high-minded, conscientious judges, — 
men worthy the respect and confidence of the community. 
You cannot have such, if you have men who consent to 
act as United States Slave Commissioners. You never 
can enact a United States Commissioner into respect. 
You may pile your statutes as high as Wachusett, they 
will suffice to disgrace the State, they cannot make a 
Slave Commissioner a respectable man. 

We have, it seems to us, a right to ask of Massachusetts 
this act, — it being clearly within her just authority, — as 
a necessary and righteous expression of the feeling of the 
State. The times are critical. South Carolina records 
her opinion of slavery in a thousand ways. She violates 
the United States Constitution to do it, expelling Mr. 
Hoar from her borders, and barring him out with fine and 
imprisonment. Young Wisconsin makes the first page of 
her State history glorious by throwing down her gauntlet 
against this slave-hunting Union, in defence of justice and 
humanity. Some of us had hoped that our beloved Com- 
monwealth would have placed that crown of oak on her 
own brow. Her youngest daughter has earned it first. 
God speed her on her bright pathway to success and im- 



EEMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 209 

mortal honor ! Shall Massachusetts alone be mute, when 
the world gathers to this great protest against a giant sin, 
to this holy crusade of humanity ? 

Say not, we claim something extreme and fanatical. 
We say only, what the State enacted in 1843 and reiter- 
ated in 1850, that to be a Massachusetts magistrate and a 
slave-hunter are incompatible offices. Surely, public opin- 
ion has not gone back since 1850. Surely, the Nebraska 
outrage has not reconciled you to the Slave Power. We 
dare be as much opposed to slavery and slave-hunting 
now as we were before that insult. Tell the nation that 
Massachusetts throws no sanction around the Slave Law 
by allowing her officers to join in executing it. She marks 
her sense of its merciless nature by refusing her broad 
seal to any one who upholds it. 

Judge Loring says, *' I only obeyed the United States 
law in returning the fugitive." Let Massachusetts say to 
him, " Do it ! do it freely ! do it as often as you please ! 
Return a fugitive slave every day ! But, when you do, 
remember you shall skulk through the streets like a leper 
from whose side every man shrinks. Remember, you 
shall hold no commission of mine. No, the humblest work 
that the lowliest official performs, since it is honest, is too 
holy to be polluted by you. We do not deny your right. 
It is, unfortunately, your right, as a citizen of the United 
States, to take your part in slave hunts ; but the Common- 
wealth has also, w^e thank God, still the right to say that 
her judges shall be decent men, at least. Make your 
choice ! You wish to be United States Commissioner? — 
be it; but no longer be officer of mine!" What! shall 
our judges be men whose names it makes one involuntarily 
shudder to meet in our public journals? — whose hand 
many an honest man would blush to be seen to touch in 
the streets? 

Indeed, Mr. Chairman, I do not exaggerate. Grant that 
u 



210 EEMO\r»^^F JUDGE LORING. 

Burns was Colonel Suttle's slave, and what are the facts? 
A brave, noble man, born, unhappily, in a Slave State, has 
shown his fitness for freedom better tlian most of us have 
done. At great risk and by great effort obtained he this 
freedom ; but we were only free born. He hides himself 
in Boston. By hard work he earns his daily bread. 
With patient assiduity, he sits at the feet of humble teach- 
ers, in school and pulpit, and tries to become really a man. 
The heavens smile over him. He feels that all good men 
must wish him success in his blameless efforts to make 
himself more worthy to stand at their side. Weeks roll 
on, and the heart which stood still with terror at every 
lifting of the door-latch begins to grow more calm. He 
has finished his day's work ; and, under the free stars, 
wearied, but full of joyful hope that words could never 
express, he seeks his home, — happy, however humble, as 
it is his, and it is free. In a moment, the cup is dashed 
from his lips. He is in fetters, and a slave. The dear 
hope of knowledge, manhood, and worthy Christian life 
seems gone. To read is a crime now, marriage a mock- 
ery, and virtue a miracle. Who shall describe the horrible 
despair of that moment? How the world must have 
seemed to shut down over him as a living tomb ! What 
hand dealt that terrible blow? This poor man, against 
mountain obstacles, is struggling to climb up to be more 
worthy of his immortality. What hand is it, that, in this 
Christian land, starts from the cloud and thrusts him back? 
It is the hand of one whom your schools have nurtured 
with their best culture, sitting at ease, surrounded with 
wealth ; one whom your commission appoints to protect 
the fatherless, and mete out justice between man and man. 
Men ! Christians ! is there one of you who would, for 
worlds, take upon his conscience the guilt of thus crushing 
a hapless, struggling soul? Is the man who could, in 
obedience to any human law, be guilty of such an act, fit 
to be judge over Christian people ? 



REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 211 

Gentlemen, the petitioners have no feeling of revenge 
toward Mr. Edward G. Loring. Let the general gov- 
ernment reward him with thousands, if it will. To us he 
is only an object of pity. There was an hour when one 
man trembled before him, — when one hapless victim, 
with more than life at stake, trembled before this man's 
want of humanity and ignorance of law. That hour has 
passed away. To-day he is but a weed on the great 
ocean of humanity. To us he is nothing ; but we, with 
you, are the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ; and for 
the honor of the State, for the sake of justice, in the name 
of humanity, we claim liis removal. We have a right to 
a judiciary Avorthy of the respect of the community. We 
cannot respect him. Do not give us a man whose judicial 
character is made up of party bias, personal predilection, 
bad law, and a reckless disregard of human rights, and 
whose heart was too hard to melt before the mute elo- 
quence of a hapless and terrified man, — do not commit to 
such a one the widows and orphans of the Commonwealth ! 
Do not place such a man on a bench which only able and 
humane and Christian men have occupied before ! Do 
not let him escape the deserved indignation of the com- 
munity, by the technical construction of a statute ! The 
Constitution has left you, as the representatives of the 
original sovereignty of the people, the power to remove a 
judge, when you think he has lost the confidence and 
respect of his constituents. Exercise it! Say to the 
United States, " The Constitution allows the return of 
fugitive slaves. Find your agents where you will ; you 
shall not find them on the Supreme or any inferior Bench 
of Massachusetts. You shall never gather round that in- 
famous procedure any respectability derived from the r^.ag- 
istracy of the Commonwealth. If it is to be done, let it 
be done by men whom it does not harm the honor or the 
interest of Massachusetts to have dishonored and made 
infamous I " 



212 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 

Mr. Chairman, give free channel to the natural instincts 
of the Commonwealth, and let us — let us be at liberty to 
despise the slave-hunter, without feeling that our chil- 
dren's hopes and lives are prejudiced thereby ! When 
you have done it, — when you have pronounced on this 
hasty, reckless, inhuman court its proper judgment, the 
verdict of official reprobation, — you will secure another 
thing. The next Slave Commissioner who opens his court 
will remember that he opens it in Massachusetts, where a 
man is not to be robbed of his rights as a human bemg 
merely because he is black. You will throw around the 
unfortunate victim of a cruel law, which you say you 
cannot annul, all the protection that Massachusetts inci- 
dentally can. And, doing this, you will do something 
to prevent seeing another such sad week as that of last 
May or June, in the capital of the Commonwealth. Al- 
though you cannot blot out this wicked clause in the 
Constitution, you will render it impossible that any but 
reckless, unprincipled, and shameless men shall aid in its 
enforcement. Such men cannot long uphold a law in this 
Commonwealth. 

The petitioners ask both these things ; claiming espe- 
cially to have proved that you can do this work, and that, 
if you love justice or mercy, you ought to do it. . 



THE BOSTON MOB.* 



MR. PRESIDENT : I feel that I have very little 
right on this platform to-day. I stand here only 
to express my gratitude to those who truly and properly 
occupy it, for what we all owe them — the women and 
the men — who stood by our honor, and so nobly did our 
duties, when we forgot it and them twenty years ago. 

At this hour, twenty years ago, I was below ii: the 
street ; — I thank God I am inside the house now ! I 
was not in the street as one of the mob, but as a spectator. 
I had come doAvn from my office in Court Street to see 
what the excitement was. I did not understand antislav- 
ery then ; that is, I did not understand the country in 
which I lived. We have all learned much since then ; 
learned what antislavery means, — learned what a repub- 
lican government really is, — learned the power of the 
press and of money, which I, at least, did not know then. 
I remember saying to the gentleman who stood next to 
me in the street : " Why does not the Mayor call out the 
regiment ? " (I belonged to it then.) " We would cheer- 
folly take arms in such a case as this. It is a very shame- 
fol business. Why does he stand there arguing ? Why 
does he not call for the guns ? " I did not then know 
that the men who should have borne them were the 

* Speech before the Antislavery Meeting held in Stacy Hall, Boston, on 
the Twentieth Anniversary of the Mob of October 21, 1835. 



214 thebS^on mob. 

mob ; that all there was of government in Boston was in 
the street ; that the people, our final rehance for the exe- 
cution of the laws, were there, in " broadcloth and broad 
daylight," in the street. Mayor Lyman knew it ; and 
the only honorable and honest course open to him was, to 
have said, " If I cannot he a magistrate, I will not pretend 
to be one." 

I do not know whether to attribute the Mayor's dis- 
graceful conduct to his confused notion of his official du- 
ties, or to a cowardly unwillingness to perform what he 
knew well enough to be his duty. A superficial observer 
of the press and pulpit of that day would be inclined to 
consider it the result of ignorance, and lay the blame at 
the door of our republican form of government, which 
thrusts up into important stations dainty gentlemen like 
Lyman, physicians never allowed to doctor any body but 
the body politic, or cunning tradesmen who have wriggled 
their slimy way to wealth, — men who in a trial hour not 
only know nothing of their own duties, but do not even 
know where to go for advice. And for the preachers, I 
am inclined to think this stolid ignorance of civil ricrhts 
and duties may be pleaded as a disgi'aceful excuse, leaving 
them guilty only of meddling in matters far above their 
comprehension. But one who looks deeper into the tem- 
per of that day will see plainly enough that the Mayor 
and the editors, with their companions "in broadcloth," 
were only blind to what they did not wish to see, and 
knew the right and wrong of the case well enough, only, 
like all half-educated people, they were but poorly able to 
comprehend the vast importance of the wrong they were 
doing. The mobs which followed, directed against others 
than Abolitionists, the ripe fruit of the seed here planted, 
opened their eyes somewhat. 

Mr. Garrison has given us specimens enougli of the 
press of that day. There was the Daily Advertiser, of 



THE BOSTON MOB. 215 

course on the wrong side, — respectable when its oppo- 
nents are strong and numerous, and quite ready to be 
scurrilous when scurrility is safe and will pay, — behind 
whose editorials a keen ear can always catch the clink of the 
dollar, — entitled to be called the Rip Van Winkle of the 
press, should it ever, like Rip, wake up ; the Advertiser 
condescended, strangely enough, to say, that it was not 
surprised (!) that papers abroad considered the meeting 
of mobocrats in the street below a riot (!) ; but the wiser 
Advertiser itself regarded it " not so much as a riot as the 
'prevention of a riot " / It " considered the whole transaction 
as the triumph of law over laivless violence^ and the love of 
order over riot and confusion " / / Dear, dreamy Van 
"Winkle! and he goes on to '^rejoice^^ at the exceeding 
"moderation" of the populace, that they did not murder 
Mr. Garrison on the spot ! And this is the journal which 
Boston literature regards as its organ, and which Boston 
wealth befools itself by styling "respectable" I 

Next came the scurrilous Gazette, which, it is said, re- 
pented of its course when it found that Northern subscrib- 
ers fell off and Southerners continued to despise it as be- 
fore ; and which, outliving public forbearance and becoming 
bankrupt, earned thus the right to be melted into the Daily 
Advertiser. 

With them in sad alliance marched the Courier, — 
always strong and frank, whichever side it took, and even 
of whose great merit and bravery between that time and 
this, it is sufficient praise to say, that it was enough to 
outweigh its great wrong in 1835, and its vile servility 
now. 

With rare daring, the Christian Register, the organ of 
the Unitarians, snatched the palm of infamy. In a mo- 
ment of forgetful frankness, remembering, probably, the 
coward course of its own sect, it counselled hypocrisy; 
suiting manner to matter, it hints to the Abolitionists, that 



216 THEBOSTON MOB. 

they should imitate the example, as, with laughable igno- 
rance, it avers, of the early Christians of Trajan's day, 
and meet in secret, if the " vanity " of the ladies would 
allow ! The coward priest forgot, if he ever knew, that 
the early Christians met in secret beneath the pavements 
of Rome, only to pray for the martyrs whose crosses lined 
the highways, whose daring defied Paganism at its own 
altars, and whose humanity stopped the bloody games of 
Rome in the upper air ; that they met beneath the ground, 
not so much to hide themselves, as to get strength for 
attacks on wicked laws and false altars. 

Infamy, however, at that day, was not a monopoly of 
one sect. Hubbard Winslow, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
strictly Orthodox, a bigot in good and regular standing, 
shortly after this preached a sermon to illustrate and de- 
fend the doctrine, that no man, under a republican gov- 
ernment, has a right to promulgate any opinion but such 
as " a majority of the brotherhood would allow and pro- 
tect"; and he is said to have boasted that Judge Story 
thanked him for such a discourse ! 

The Mayor played a most shuffling and dishonorable 
part. For some time previous, he had held private con- 
ferences with leadinoj Abolitionists, urmno; them to dis- 
cs ' o O 

continue their meetings, professing, all the while, entire 
friendship, and the most earnest determination to protect 
them in their rights at any cost. The Abolitionists treated 
him, in return, with the utmost confidence. They yielded 
to his wishes, so far as to consent to do nothing that would 
increase the public excitement, with this exception, that 
they insisted on holding meetings often enough to assert 
their right to meet. Yet, while they were thus honorably 
avoiding everything which would needlessly excite the 
public mind, going to the utmost verge of submission and 
silence that duty permitted, — while the Abolitionists, with 
rare moderation, were showing this magnanimous forbear- 



THE BOSTON MOB. 217 

ance and regard to the weakness of public authority and 
the reckless excitement of the public, — the Mayor himself, 
in utter violation of official decorum and personal honor, 
accepted the chair of the public meeting assembled in 
Faneuil Hall, and presided over that assembly, — an as- 
sembly which many intended should rouse a mob against 
the Abolitionists, and which none but the weak or wilfully 
blind could avoid seeing must lead to that result. In liis 
opening speech to that factious meeting, the Mayor, under 
oath at that moment to protect every citizen in his rights, 
and doubly bound just then by private assurances to these 
very Abolitionists, forgot all his duty, all his pledges, so 
far as to publicly warn them of the danger of their meeting^ 
— a warning or threat, the memory of which might Avell 
make him tremblmgly anxious to save Garrison's life, since 
of any blood shed that day, every law, divine and human, 
would have held the Mayor guilty. 

Such was the temper of those times. The ignorant were 
not aware, and the wise were too corrupt to confess, that 
the most precious of human rights, free thought, was at 
stake. These women knew it, felt the momentous char- 
acter of the issue, and consented to stand in the gap. 
Those were trial hom's. I never think of them without 
my shame for my native city being swallowed up in grati- 
tude to those who stood so bravely for the right. Let us 
not consent to be ashamed of the Boston of 1835. Those 
howlino- wolves in the streets were not Boston. These 
brave men and women were Boston. We will remember 
no other. 

I never open the statute-book of Massachusetts with- 
out thanking Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel J. May, 
Charles Follen and Samuel E. Sev/all, and those around 
me who stood with them, for preventing Edward Everett 
from blackening it with a law making free speech an in- 
dictable offence. And we owe it to fifty or sixty women, 



218 THE^igTON MOB. 

and a dozen or two of men, that free speech was saved, in 
1835, in the city of Boston. Indeed, we owe it mainly to 
one man. If there is one here who -loves Boston, who 
loves her honor, who rejoices to know that, however fine 
the thread, there is a thread which bridges over that dark 
and troubled wave, and connects us by a living nerve with 
the freemen of the Revolution, — that Boston, though be- 
trayed by her magistrates, her wealth, her press, and her 
pulpits, never utterly bowed her neck, let him remember 
that we owe it to you. Sir, [Mr. Francis Jackson,] who of- 
fered to the women not allowed to meet here, even though 
the Mayor was in this hall, the use of your house ; and 
one sentence of your letter deserves to be read whenever 
Boston men are met together to celebrate the preservation 
of the right of free speech in the city of Adams and Otis. 
History, which always loves courage, will write it on a page 
whiter than marble and more incorruptible than gold. 
You said. Sir, in answer to a letter of thanks for the use 
of your house : — 

" If a lai'ge majority of this community choose to turn a deaf 
ear to the wrongs wliich are inflicted upon their countrymen in 
other portions of the land, — if they are content to turn away 
from the sight of oppression, and ' pass by on the other side,* — 
so it must be. 

" But when they undertake in any way to impair or annul my 
right to speak, write, and pubhsh upon any subject, and more 
especially upon enormities which are the common concern of 
every lover of his country and his kind, — so it must not be, — 
so it shall not be, if I for one can prevent it. Upon this great 
right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exer- 
cise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house 
at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if, in de- 
fence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and 
shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls 
shall be levelled to the earth, — let them fall, if they must. 
They cannot crumble in a better cause. They wiU appear of 



THE BOSTON MOB. 219 

very little value to me, after their owner shall have been whipped 
into silence." 

This was only thirty days after the iiiob. I need not 
read the remainder of that letter, wiuch is in the same 

strain. 

We owe it to one man that a public meeting was held, 
within a month, by these same women, in the city of Bos- 
ton. But to their honor be it rememembered, also, — a 
fad which Mr. Garrison omitted to state, — that when 
Mayor 1/yman urged them to go home, they left this hall 
in public procession and went "home" to the house of 
Mrs. M. W. Chapman, in West Street, to organize and 
finish their meeting that very afternoon. To Mrs. Chap- 
man's pen we owe the most living picture of that whole 
scene, and her able, graphic, and eloquent reports of the 
proceedings of the Female Antislavery Society, and spe- 
cially of this day, have hung up to everlasting contempt 
the " men of property and standing," — the " respectable " 
men of Boston. 

Let us open, for a moment, the doors of the hall which 
stood here, and listen to the Mayor receiving his lesson in 
civil duty from the noble women of this society. 

Mr. Lyman. — Go home, ladies, go home. 

President. — What renders it necessary we should go 

home ? 

Mr. Lyman. — I am the Mayor of the city, and I cannot 
now explain ; but will call upon you tliis evening. 

President. — If the ladies will be seated, we will take the 
sense of the meeting. 

Mr. Lyman. — Don't stop, ladies, go home. 

President. — Will the ladies hsten to a letter addressed to 
the Society, by Francis Jackson, Esq. ? 

Mr. Lyman. — Ladies, do you wish to see a scene of blood- 
shed and confusion ? If you do not, go home. 

One of the Ladies. — Mr. Lyman, your personal friends 



220 TBJ^OSTON MOB. 

are the instigators of tliis mob ; have you ever used your per- 
sonal influence with them ? 

Mr. Lyman. — I know no personal friends ; I am merely 
an official. Indeed, ladies, you must retire. It is dangerous to 
remain. 

Lady. — If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as 
well die here as anjsvhere. 

There is nothing braver than that in the history of the 
Lono; Parliament, or of the Roman Senate. 

At that Faneuil Hall meeting, one of " the family " was 
present, — one of that family which was never absent when 
a deed of infamy was to be committed against the slave, — a 
family made up mostly of upstart attorneys, who fancy them- 
selves statesmen, because able to draw a writ or pick holes 
in an indictment. Mr. Thomas B. Curtis read the resolu- 
tions ; and then followed three speeches, by Harrison Gray 
Otis, Richard Fletcher, and Peleg Sprague, unmatched for 
adroit, ingenious, suggestive argument and exhortation to 
put down, legally or violently, — each hearer could choose 
for himself, — all public meetings on the subject of slavery 
in the city of Boston. Everything influential in the city 
was arrayed against this society of a few women. I could 
not but reflect, as I sat here, how immortal principle is. 
Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. read the notice of this society's 
meeting from Dr. Channing's pulpit, and almost every 
press in the city woke barking at him next morning for 
what was called his "impudence." He is gone to his 
honored grave ; many of those who met in this hall in 
pursuance of that notice are gone likewise. They died, 
as Whittier so well says, 

" their brave hearts breaking slow, 
But, self-forgetful to the last, 
In words of cheer and bugle glow. 

Their breath upon the darkness passed." 

In those days, as we gathered round their graves, and 



THE BUS ION MOK ZZT 

resolved that, the " narrower the circle became, we would 
draw the closer together," we envied the dead their rest. 
Men ceased to slander them in that sanctuary ; and as we 
looked forward to the desolate vista of calamity and toil 
before us, and thought of the temptations wliich beset us 
on either side from worldly prosperity which a slight sacri- 
fice of principle might secure, or social ease so close at 
hand by only a little turning aside, we almost envied the 
dead the quiet sleep to which we left them, the harvest 
reaped, and the seal set beyond the power of change. 
And of those who assaulted them, many are gone. The 
Mayor so recreant to his duty, or so lacking in knowledge 
of his office, is gone ; the Judge before whom Mr. Gar- 
rison was arraigned, at the jail, the next day after the 
mob, is gone ; the Sheriff who rode with him to the jail is 
gone ; the city journals have changed hands, being more 
than once openly bought and soicF.' The editor of the 
Atlas, whose zeal in the cause of mob violence earned it 
the honor of giving its name to the day, — " the Atlas 
mob" many called it, — is gone ; many of the prominent 
actors in that scene, twenty years ago, have passed away ; 
the most eloquent of those whose voices cried *' Havoc ! " at 
Faneuil Hall has gone, — Mr. Otis has his wish, that the 
grave might close over him before it closed over the 
Union, which God speed in his good time ; — but the 
same principle fills these same halls, as fresh and vital to- 
day, as self-fixed and resolute to struggle against pulpit 
and press, against wealth and majorities, against denuncia- 
tion and unpopularity, and certain in the end to set its 
triumphant foot alike on man and everything that man has 
made. 

Here stands to-day the man whom Boston wealth and 
Boston respectability went home, twenty years ago this 
night, and gloried in having crushed. The loudest boast- 
ers are gone. He stands to-day among us, these very 



x>\^k7 X \jx-\ ax\j±Jt 



walls, these ideas which breathe and burn around us, say- 
ing for him, "I still live." If, twenty or twice twenty 
years hence, he too shall have passed away, may it not be 
till his glad ear has caught the jubilee of the emancipated 
millions whom his life has been given to save ! 

This very Female Antislavery Society which was met 
here twenty years ago did other good service but a few 
months after, in getting the Court of Massachusetts to 
recognize that great principle of freedom, that a slave, 
brought into a Northern State ^ is free. It was in the well- 
known Med case. We owe that to the Boston Female 
Antislavery Society. To-day, Judge Kane, and the 
Supreme Court, which alone can control him, are endeav- 
oring to annihilate that principle which twenty years ago 
was established. How far and how soon they may be 
successful, God only knows. 

Truly, as Mr. Garrison has said, the intellectual and 
moral growth of antislavery has been great within twenty 
years ; but who shall deny that, in the same twenty years, 
the political, the organic, the civil gi'owth of slavery has 
been more than equal? We stand here to-day with a 
city redeemed — how far? Just so far as this meeting 
commemorates, — the riglit of free speech is secured. 
Thank God! in twenty years, we have proved that an 
antislavery meeting is not only possible, but respectable, 
in Massachusetts, — that is all we have proved. Lord 
Erskine said a newspaper was stronger than government. 
We have got many newspapers on our side. Ideas will, 
in the end, beat down anything ; — Ave have got free 
course for ideas. 

But let us not cheer ourselves too hastily, for the gov- 
ernment, the wealth, the public opinion, of this very city in 
which we meet, remain to-day almost as firmly anchored 
as ever on the side of slavery. Vanes turn only when the 
wind shifts, so the Daily Advertiser has not changed a whit, 



THE BOSTON MOB. 223 

— not a whit. The same paper that spoke doubtful words 
before October 21st, hoped the meetmg would be stopped, 
and afterwards could not quite decide whether there was a 
mob or not, but was glad the ladies were not allowed to 
hold their meeting, — that same paper would doze thi'ough 
the same shameless part to-day. That paper, which repre- 
sented then so well the mobocrats in broadcloth, has passed 
from a father wearied in trying to hold Massachusetts 
back, to his son, — whose accession, to reverse James the 
First's motto, *'no day followed," — and it is pubhshed 
to-day with the same spirit, represents the same class, 
actuated exactly with the same purpose. If there is 
strength outside the city, in the masses, enough to rebuke 
that class and that press and that purpose, and give the 
State of Massachusetts more emphatically to some Idnd of 
antislavery, it is still a struggle. I would not rejoice, 
therefore, too much. We must discriminate. " To break 
your leg twice over* the same stone is your own fault,'* 
says the Spanish proverb. 

I came here to-day to thank God that Boston never 
wanted a person to claim his inalienable right to utter his 
thoughts on the subject of slavery, nor a spot upon which 
he could do it; — that is all my rejoicing to-day. And 
in that corner-stone of individual daring, of fidelity to con- 
science, I recognize the possibility of the emancipation of 
three millions of slaves. But that possibility is to be made 
actual by labors as earnest and unceasing, by a self-devo- 
tion as entire, as that which has marked the twenty years 
we have just passed. 

I find that these people, who have made this day 
famous, were accused in their own time of harsh lancniao-e 
and over-boldness, and great disparagement of dignities. 
These were the three charges brought against the Female 
Antislavery Society in 1835. The women forgot their 
homes, it was said, in endeavoring to make the men do 



224 THE BOSTON MOB. 

their duty. It was a noble lesson which the sisters and 
mothers of that time set the women of the present day, — 
I hope they will follow it. 

There was another charge brought against them, — it 
was, that they had no reverence for dignitaries. The 
friend who sits here on my right (Mrs. Southwick) dared 
to rebuke a slaveholder with a loud voice, in a room just 
before, if not then, consecrated by the presence of Chief 
Justice Shaw, and the press was astonished at her bold- 
ness. I hope, though she has left the city, she has left 
representatives behind her who will dare rebuke any 
slave-hunter, or any servant of the slave-power, Avith the 
same boldness, frankness, and defiance of authorities, and 
contempt of parchment. 

Then there was another charge brought agamst their 
meetings, that they indulged in exceedingly bold language 
about pulpits and laws and wicked magistrates. That is 
a sin which I hope will not die out. God grant we may 
inherit that also. 

I should like to know very much how many there are 
in this hall to-day who were out in the street, as actual 
mobocrats, twenty years ago. I know there are some 
here who signed the various petitions to the City Govern- 
ment to prevent the meeting from being held ; but it would 
be an interesting fact to know how many are here to-day, 
actually enlisted under the antislavery banner, who tore 
that sign to pieces. I wish we had those relics ; the piece 
of that door which was long preserved, the door so coolly 
locked by Charles Burleigh, — it was a touching relic. 
We ought to have a portion of that sign which the Mayor 
threw down as a tub to the whale, hoping to save some 
semblance of his authority, — hoping the multitude would 
be satisfied with the sign, and spare the women in this 
hall, — forgetting that a mob is controlled only by its fears, 
not by pity or good manners. 



THE BOSTON MOB. 225 

But, Mr. President, it is a sad story to think of. Anti- 
slavery is a sad history to read, sad to look back upon. 
What a miserable refuse pubhc opinion has been for the 
past twenty years ! — what a wretched wreck of all that 
repubhcan education ought to have secured I Take up 
that file of papers which Mr. Garrison showed you, and 
think, Republicanism, a Protestant pulpit, free schools, the 
model government, had existed in our city for sixty years, 
and this was the result ! A picture, the very copy of that 
which Sir Robert Peel held up in the British ParHament, 
within a month after the mob, as proof that republicanism 
could never succeed. It is a sad picture to look back 
upon. The only light which redeems it is the heroism 
that consecrated this hall, and one house in Hollis Street, 
places which Boston will yet make pilgrimages to honor. 

The only thing that Americans (for let us be Ameri- 
cans to-day, not simply Abolitionists), — the only thing 
for which Americans can rejoice, this day, is, that everything 
was not rotten. The whole head was not sick, nor the 
whole heart faint. There were ten men, even in Sodom ! 
And when the Mayor forgot his duty, when the pulpit 
prostituted itself, and when the press became a pack of 
hounds, the women of Boston, and a score or two of men, 
remembered Hancock and Adams, and did their duty. 
And if there are young people who hear me to-day, let us 
hope that when this special cause of antislavery effort is 
past and gone, when another generation shall have come 
upon the stage, and new topics of dispute have arisen, 
there will be no more such scenes. How shall we ever 
learn toleration for what we do not believe ? The last 
lesson a man ever learns is, that liberty of thought and 
speech is the right for all mankind; that the man who 
denies every article of our creed is to be allowed to preach 
just as often and just as loud as we ourselves. We have 
learned this, — been taught it by persecution on the ques- 

15 



226 THE BOSTON MOB. 

tion of slavery. No matter whose the lips that would 
speak, they must be free and ungagged. Let us always 
remember that he does not really believe his own opinions, 
who dares not give free scope to his opponent. Persecution 
is really want of faith in our creed. Let us see to it, my 
fiiends, Abohtionists, that we learn the lesson the whole 
circle round. Let us believe that the whole of truth can 
pover do harm to the whole of virtue. Trust it. And 
xv^xuember, that, in order to get tlie wliole of ti-uth, you 
must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his 
conscience, and protect him in so doing. 

The same question was wrought out here twenty years 
ago, as was wrought in the protest of fifty or a hundred 
Abolitionists, when an infidel (Abner Kneeland) was sent 
to Boston jail for preaching his sentiments. I hope that 
we shall all go out of this hall, remembering the highest 
lesson of this day and place, that every man's conscience 
is sacred. No matter how good our motives are in try- 
ing to gag him ! Mayor Lyman had some good motives 
that day, had he only known what his office meant, and 
stayed at home, if he felt himself not able to fill it. It is 
not motives. Entire, unshackled freedom for every man's 
lips, no matter what his doctrine ; — the safety of free 
discussion, no matter how wide its range ; — no check on 
the peaceful assemblage of thoughtful men ! Let us con- 
secrate our labors for twenty years to come in doing better 
than those who went before us, and widening the circle of 
their principle into the full growth of its actual and proper 
significance. 

Let me thank the women who came here twenty years 
ago, some of whom are met here to-day, for the good they 
have done me. I thank them for all they have taught me. 
I had read Greek and Roman and English history ; I had 
by heart the classic eulogies of brave old men and martyrs; 
I dreamed, in my folly, that I heard the same tone in my 



THE BOSTON MOB. 227 

youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett ; — these 
women taught me my mistake. They taught me that down 
in those hearts which loved a principle for itself, asked no 
man's leave to think or speak, true to their convictions, no 
matter at what hazard, flowed the real blood of '76, of 1640, 
of the hemlock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints 
of Jerusalem. I thank them for it ! My eyes were sealed, 
so that, although I knew the Adamses and Otises of 1776, 
and the Mary Dyers and Ann Hutchinsons of older times, 
I could not recognize the Adamses and Otises, the Dyers 
and Hutchinsons, whom I met in the streets of '35. These 
women opened my eyes, and I thank them and you [turn- 
ino; to Mrs. Southwick and Miss Henrietta Sargent, who 
sat upon the platform] for that anointing. May our next 
twenty years prove us all apt scholars of such brave in- 
struction I 



THE PILGRIMS 



MR. PRESIDENT: History tells us that tlie Pil- 
grims at this season of the year 1622 were very 
hungry, almost starving ; but certainly their descendants 
must be far more insatiable than they then were, if, after 
all the noble things they have heard to-day, they can ask 
for more. It seems to me we are in the condition of that 
man whom Oliver Wendell Holmes describes in one of his 
lectures. You remember he says the lyceum-lecturers 
held a meeting, and found, as a matter of universal expe- 
rience, that at a certain period in every lecture a man 
w^ent out, and each one assigned a different reason for it. 
One thouglit it was business, another the heat, and a third 
fancied it was some offensive sentiment uttered by the 
speaker. But Holmes, being a physician, performed an 
autopsy, and found the man's brain was full. [Loud 
laughter and applause.] Now, Sir, I certainly think I 
may claim that reason for sitting down. After that elo- 
quent and profound oration, and all we have listened to 
since, surely our brains must be full. 

Why, who can do anything but repeat what we have 
heard ? Do you not remember. Sir, when we were little 
boys, and followed the martial music, our steps keeping 

* Speech at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society, in Plymouth, December 
21, 1855, in response to the following toast : — 

" The Pilgrim Fatliers, — Their fidelity, amid hardships and perils, to truth 
and duty, has secured to their descendants prosperity and peace." 



THE PILGRIMS. 229 

time, street after street, till we came to some broad way 
that our fears or our mothers forbade us to enter ; and 
when the music turned away, our tiny feet kept time long 
afterwards ? Can we get away from the spell which took 
possession of us in yonder church ? I can only think in 
that channel. Who can get his mind away from the deep 
resounding march with which the speaker carried us from 
century to century, and held up the torch, and pointed 
out the significance of each age ? All we can do is to 
utter some little reflection, — something suggested by that 
train of thought. 

How true it is that the Puritans originated no new 
truth ! How true it is, also, Mr. President, that it is not 
truth which agitates the world ! Plato in the groves of 
the Academy sounded on and on to the utmost depth of 
philosophy, but Athens was quiet. Calling around him 
the choicest minds of Greece, he pointed out the worth- 
lessness of their altars and the sham of pubhc life, but 
Athens was quiet, — it was all speculation. When Socra- 
tes walked the streets of Athens, and, questioning every- 
day life, struck the altar till the faith of the passer-by 
faltered, it came close to action, and immediately they 
gave him hemlock, for the city was turned upside down. 
I might find a better illustration in the streets of Jerusa- 
lem. What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, 
but ACTION. Europe had ideas, but she was letting '1 
dare not wait upon I would,'' like the cat in the adage. 
The Puritans, with native pluck, launched out into the 
deep sea. Men, who called themselves thinkers, had been 
creeping along the Mediterranean, from headland to head- 
land, in their timidity ; the Pilgrims launched boldly out 
into the Atlantic, and trusted God. [Loud applause.] 
That is the claim they have upon posterity. It was 
ACTION that made them what they were. 

No, they did not originate anything, but they planted ; 



230 THE PILGKIMS. 

and the answer to all criticism upon them is to be — thk 
OAK. [Cheers.] The Edinburgh Reviewer takes up that 
acorn, the good ship Mayflower, and says, " I do not see 
stalwart branches, I do not see a broad tree here." Mr. 
President, we are to show it to him. The glory of the 
fathers is the children. Mr. Winthrop says the pens of 
the Puritans are their best defence. No, the Winthrops 
of to-day are to be the best defence of tlie Winthrops 
of 1630; they are to w^rite that defence in the broad, legi- 
ble steps of a life whose polar star is Duty, whose goal 
is Liberty, and whose staff is Justice. [Enthusiastic ap- 
plause.] The glory of men is often, not what they actually 
produce, so much as Avhat they enable others to do. My 
Lord Bacon, as he takes his proud march down the centu- 
ries, may lay one hand on the telegraph and the other on 
the steamboat, and say, " These are mine, for I taught 
you to invent." And the Puritan, wdierever he finds a 
free altar, free lips, ay, and a free family, may say, 
"These are mine!" No matter for the stain of bigotry 
which rests upon his memory, since he taught us these. 

I think, Mr. President, that the error in judging of the 
Puritans has been that which the oration of to-day sets 
right. We are to regard them in posse, not in esse, — in 
the possibilities which were wrapped up in that day, 1620, 
not in what poor human bodies actually produced at that 
time. Men look back upon the Carvers and Bradfords 
of 1620, and seem to think, if they existed in 1855, they 
would be clad in the same garments, and walking in the 
same identical manner and round that they did in 1620. 
It is a mistake. The Pilgrims of 1620 would be, in 1855, 
not in Plymouth, but in Kansas. [Loud cheers.] Solo- 
mon's Temple, they tell us, had the best system of light- 
ning-rods ever invented, — he anticipated Franklin. Do 
you suppose, if Solomon lived now, he would stop at light- 
ning- conductors ? No, he would have telegraphs without 



THE PILGRIMS. 231 

wires, able to send messages both ways at the same time, 
and where only he who sent and he who received should 
know what the messages were. 

Do you suppose that, if Elder Brewster could come up 
from his grave to-day, he would be contented with the 
Congregational Church and the five points of Calvin ? 
No, Sir; he would add to his creed the Maine Liquor 
Law, the Underground Railroad, and the thousand Sharpe's 
Hifles, addressed " Kansas," and labelled " Books." [En- 
thusiastic ajid long-continued applause.] My idea is, if he 
took his staff in his hand and went off to exchange pulpits, 
you might hear of him at the Music Hall of Boston [where 
Kev. Theodore Parker preaches] and the Plymouth 
Church at Brooklyn [Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's]. 
[Renewed applause.] 

We should bear in mind development when we criticise 
the Pilgrims, — where they would be to-day. Indeed, to 
be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is 
not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to 
China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had 
a crack in it. The copies of 1620 and 1787 you com- 
monly see have the cracky and very large, too. Thee and 
thou, a stationary hat, bad grammar and worse manners, 
with an ugly coat, are not George Fox in 1855. You will 
recos^nize him in any one who rises from the lap of artificial 
life, flings away its softness, and startles you with the sight 
of a MAN. Neither do I acknowledge. Sir, the right of 
Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all 
America; it only crops out here. [Cheers.] It has cropped 
out a great many times in our history. You may recognize 
it always. Old Putnam stood upon it at Bunker Hill, when 
he said to the Yankee boys, " Don't fire till you see the 
whites of their eyes." Ingraham had it for ballast when 
he put his little sloop between two Austrian frigates, and 
threatened to blow them out of the water, if they did not 



232 THE PILGRIMS. 

respect the broad eagle of the United States, in the case 
of Koszta. Jefferson had it for a writing-desk when he 
drafted the Declaration of Independence and the " Statute 
of Religious Liberty" for Virginia. Lovejoy rested his 
musket upon it when they would not let him print at Al- 
ton, and he said, " Death or free speech ! " I recognized 
the clink of it to-day, when the apostle of the " Higher 
Law" came to lay his garland of everlasting — none a 
better right than he — upon the monument of the Pil- 
grims. [Enthusiastic cheering.] He says he is not a 
descendant of the Pilgrims. That is a mistake. There is 
a pedigree of the body and a pedigree of the mind. [Ap- 
plause.] He knows so much about the Mayflower, that, 
as they say in the West, I know he was " thary [Laugh- 
ter and applause.] Ay, Sir, the rock cropped out again. 
Garrison had it for an imposing-stone when he looked in 
the faces of seventeen millions of angry men and printed 
his sublime pledge, " I will not retreat a single inch, and 
I will be heard." [Great cheering.] 

Sir, you say you are going to raise a monument to the 
Pilgrims. I know where I would place it, if I had a 
vote. I should place one corner-stone on the rock, and 
the other on that level spot where fifty of the one hun- 
dred were buried before the winter was over. In that 
touching, eloquent, terrific picture of what the Pilgrims 
passed through, rather than submit to compromise, which 
the orator sketched for us to-day, he omitted to mention 
that one half of their number went down into the grave ; 
but the remainder closed up shoulder to shoulder, as firm, 
unflinching, hopeful as ever. Yes, death rather than the 
compromise of Elizabeth. [Loud applause.] I would 
write on their monument two mottoes : one, " The Right 
is more than our country ! " and over the graves of the 
fifty, " Death, rather than Compromise ! " Mr. Presi- 
dent, I detest that word. It is so dangerous, I would not 



THE PILGRIMS. 233 

have it even In matters of expediency. As the Irishman 
said in Jefferson's day, when the " true-blue " Democrats 
took him from the emigrant ship, naturaKzed him at once, 
then hurried to the ballot-box, uro-ino- him to vote the 
true Democratic, government ticket, " The government ! I 
never knew a government which was not the devil. Give 
me the opposition ! " [Laughter.] The very word is 
misleading, — out with it ! I would never have a com- 
promise for anything. 

My friend, Governor Boutwell, says the Puritans had 
no taste in architecture. I remember the first vote passed 
after they landed ; it was, that each man build his own 
house. [Cheers.] I am for having each man build his 
own mental house now, without having too much uni- 
formity in the architecture, and, at any rate, keeping clear 
of compromises and smothering phrases, and all shams and 
delusions. 

What did the Pilgrims do ? Why, Sir, it was a great 
question at that day which course to take. Cromwell and 
Hampden stood on one side, Carver and Bradford on the 
other. Which would best reform the English government, 
staying at home or going away ? History answers which 
effected the most. Which has struck the heaviest blows 
at the English aristocracy, the efforts of those who stood 
nearest, or the sight and example of America, as she 
loomed up in gigantic proportions ? Mr. President, they 
say that Michael Angelo once entered a palace at Rome 
where Raphael was ornamenting the ceiling, and as An- 
gelo walked round, he saw that all the figures were too 
small for the room. Stopping a moment, he sketched on 
one side an immense head proportioned to the chamber; 
and when his friends asked him why, his reply was, 
*' I criticise by creation, not by finding fault." Carver 
and Bradford did so. They came across the water, 
created a great model state, and bade England ta.ie 



234 THE^PILGKIMS. 

warning. The Edinburgh Reviewer may be seen running 
up and down the sides of the Pilgrims, and taking their 
measure, — where does he get his ^^ardstick ? He gets it 
from the very institutions they made for him. [Applause.] 
He would never have known how to criticise, if their 
creations had not taught him. 

Mr. President, I have already detained you much 
longer than I would. Surely to-day the Puritans have 
received their fit interpreter. We know them. Their 
great principles we are to carry with us ; that one idea, 
persistency, — that was their polar star, and it is the key 
to all their success. They never lost sight of 'it. They 
sometimes talked for Buncombe ; they did it when they 
professed allegiance to Elizabeth. Our fathers did it when 
they professed allegiance to George III., — it Avas only for 
Buncombe ! [Laughter.] But, concealed under the vel- 
vet phrase, there was the stern Puritan muscle, which held 
on to individual right. 

The Puritans believed that institutions were made for 
man. Europe established a civihzation, which, like that 
of Greece, made the state everything, the man nothing. 
The man was made for the institutions ; the man was 
made for the clothes. The Puritans said, " No, let us go 
out and make clothes for the man ; let us make institutions 
for men ! " That is the radical principle, it seems to me, 
which runs through all their history. You could not 
beguile them with the voice of the charmer, " charm he 
never so wisely"; but down through all the weary years 
of colonial history to the period of the Revolution, the 
Puritan pulse beat in unquailing, never-faltering allegiance 
to this principle of the sacredness of man. Let us hold on 
to it ; it is to be our salvation. 

Mr. President, the toast to which j^ou called upon me 
to respond says our fathers have secured prosperity and 
peace. Yes, " secured " it. It is not here ; we have not 



THE PILGRBIS. 235 

jet got it, but we shall have it. It is all " secured," for 
they planted so wisely, it will come. They planted their 
oak or pine tree in the broad lines of New England, and 
gave it room to grow. Tlieir great care was, tlia^t it should 
grow, no matter at what cost. Goethe says, that, if you 
plant an oak in a flower-vase, either the oak must wither 
or the vase crack : some men go for saving the vase. Too 
many now-a-days have that anxiety : the Puritans would 
have let it crack. So say I. If there is anything that 
cannot bear free thought, let it crack. There is a class 
among us so conservative, that they are afraid the roof 
will come down if you sweep off the cobwebs. As Douo-- 
lass Jerrold says, " They can never fully rehsh the new 
moon, out of respect for that venerable institution, the old 
one." [Great merriment and applause.] 

Why, Sir, the first constitution ever made was framed 
in the Mayflower. It was a very good constitution, 
parent of all that have been made since, — a goodly 
family, some bad and some good. The parent was laid 
aside on the shelf the moment the progress of things re- 
quired it. I hope none of the children have grown so 
strong that they can prevent the same event befallino- 
themselves when necessity requires. Hold on to that idea 
with true New England persistency, — the sacredness of 
individual man, — and everything else will evolve from it 
The Philhpses, Mr. President, did not come from Ply- 
mouth ; they made their longest stay at Andover. Let me 
tell you an Andover story. One day, a man went into a 
store there, and began telhng about a fire. " There had 
never been such a fire," he said, "in the county of Essex. 
A man going by Deacon Pettingill's barn saw an owl 
on the ridge-pole. He fired at the owl, and the waddinc. 
some how or other, getting into the sliingles, set the hay 
on fire, and it was all destroyed, — ten tons of hay, six 
head of cattle, the finest horse in the country," &c. The 



'Z6b TB^PILGRIMS. 



Deacon was nearly crazed by it. The men in tlie store 
began exclaiming and commenting upon it. " What a 
loss ! " says one. " Why, the Deacon Avill wellnigh break 
down under it," says another. And so they went on, 
speculating one after another, and the conversation drifted 
on in all sorts of conjectures. At last, a quiet man, who 
sat spitting in the fire, looked up, and asked, " Did he 
hit the owl ? " [Tumultuous applause.] That man was 
made for the sturdy reformer, of one idea, whom Mr. 
Seward described. 

No matter what the name of the thing be ; no matter 
what the sounding phrase is, what tub be thrown to the 
whale, always ask the politician and the divine, " Did he 
hit that owl ? " Is hberty safe ? Is man sacred ? They 
say. Sir, I am a fanatic, and so I am. But, Sir, none of 
us have yet risen high enough. Afar off, I see Carver 
and Bradford, and I mean to get up to them. [Loud 
cheers.] 



LETTER 

TO JUDGE SHAW AND PRESIDENT WALKER* 



To LEMUEL SHAW, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, and 

JAMES WALIOIR, President of Harvard University. 

("1 ENTLEMEN : Now that the press has ceased its 
X ridicule of your homage to Morphy at the Revere 
House, — a criticism of httle importance, — I wish to pre- 
sent the scene to you in a different light. 

You, Mr. Chief Justice, represent the law of the Com- 
monwealth ; to you, Mr. President, is committed the 
moral guardianship of the young men of her University. 
Yet I find you both at a table of revellers, under a roof 
whose chief support and profit come from the illegal sale 
of intoxicating drink, and which boasts itself the champion 
and head of an organized, flagrant, and avowed contempt 
of the laws of the Commonwealth. No one was surprised 
to see at your side a Mayor who owes his office to the 
votes of that disorderly band whose chief is the Revere 
House. Few wondered at the presence of a Professor 
placed by private munificence to watcb over the piety and 
morals of your College, Mr. President ; though a manly 
protest against fashionable vice might do something to re- 

* The hotels of Boston, with the connivance of the City Government, 
refuse to obey the Maine Liquor Law of Massachusetts. The Kevere House, 
the most fashionable of our hotels, was chosen to offer a public dinner to 
Morphy, at which Avere present Judge Shaw, President Walker, the Mayor, 
Professor Iluntington, and other dignitaries. 



238 LETTE^^ 



JUDGE SHAW 



deem the office from seeming only an eaves-dropping spy 
on the opinions and manners of young men. 

But you, Mr. Chief Justice, know 'that three quarters, 
if not four fifths, of all crime result from habits of intoxica- 
tion ; that nine tenths, at least, of all the murderers you 
have sent to the gallows had never been murderers had 
tiiey not first been drunkards. You can look round you, 
and back for fifty years, and see places at the bar and on 
the bench, once filled by genius and hope, now vacant, — 
their tenants in drunkards' graves. You know how fear- 
ful the peril which modern civihzation, and especially 
popular institutions, encounter from the cheapness of liquor, 
and the habits of indulgence in all our great cities ; you 
know the long and earnest labors of noble men, for fifty 
years, in both hemispheres, against this evil, and the mo- 
mentous experiment they are trying of legal prohibition to 
arrest it, resulting here in a stringent law against the sale 
of intoxicating drinks. You know also that the Revere 
House is the insolent leader of that heartless and selfish 
faction which, defeated before the people, seeks, by un- 
blushing defiance of law, to overbear opinion and statute. 

And you, Mr. President, the moral guardian of the 
young men of our University, Avell know its venerable 
statutes and unceasing efforts to prevent the use of wine 
within its walls. You know how many, often the bright- 
est, names on your catalogue, too early marked with the 
asterisk of death, owe their untimely end to wine. Both 
of you know that the presence of men holding such offices 
as yours goes as far as recreant office and reputation can 
to make a bad roof respectable. 

Yet I find you both at a midnight revel, doing your 
utmost to give character to a haunt which boasts its open 
and constant defiance of the moral sense of the State, sol- 
emnly expressed in its statutes. 

No one denies. Gentlemen, your right to indulge what 



AND PRESIDENT WALKER. 239 

social habits you please in the privacy of your own dwell- 
ings ; or, in travelling, to use the customary accommoda- 
tions of an inn, even though intoxicating drink is sold on 
its premises. Fcav will care to criticise, if, choosing some 
decent roof, you join your fellows and mock the moral 
sentiment of the community by a public carousal. But 
while you hold these high offices, we, the citizens of a 
Commonwealth whose character you represent, emphati- 
cally deny your right to appear at illegal revels in a gilded 
grog-shop, which, but for the sanction of such as you, had 
lonff aoro met the indictment it deserves. How can we 
expect the police to execute a law upon which the Chief 
Justice pours contempt by his example ? How shall the 
grand jury indict the nuisance of which the Supreme 
Bench has, for an hour, made a part ? We, the citizens, 
have a right to claim that, should public opinion, by our 
labors, reach the point of presenting these gorgeous grog- 
shops at the criminal bar, we shall not find their frequent- 
ers on the bench. 

Again and again, Mr. Chief Justice, have I lieard you, 
at critical moments, in a voice whose earnest emotion half 
checked its utterance, remind your audience of the sacred 
duty resting on each man to respect and obey the law ; 
assuring us that the welfare of society was bound up in 
this individual submission to existing law. How shall the 
prisoner at the bar reconcile the grave sincerity of the 
magistrate with this heedless disregard by the man of most 
important laws? If, again, the times should call you to 
bid us smother justice and humanity at the command of 
statutes, we may remind you with what heartless indiffer- 
ence you treated the law you were sworn and paid to 
uphold, and one on which the hearts of the best men in 
the State were most strongly set. Was it not enough that 
you let History paint you bowing beneath a slave-hunter's 
chain to enter your own court-room ? but must you also 



240 LETTER TO JUDGE SHAW 

present yourself in public, lifting to your lips the wine- 
cup, which, by the laws of the State •over whose courts 
you preside, it is an indictable offence and a nuisance to 
sell you? 

And let me remind you, Mr. President, that even your 
young men sometimes pause amid scenes of temptation, or 
in our streets, where every tenth door opens to vice, — 
pause at some chance thought of home or rising regard for 
the sentiment of the community. And, Sir, should such 
frail purpose of even one youth falter before the sight of 
his President in a circle of wine-bibbers, and that fall lead 
to an unhonored grave, you will be bound to remember 
that, in the check and example you promised and were 
expected and set to hold upon him, you wholly failed; 
that in the most impressible moments of his hfe he saw the 
virtue of the State struggling with its sensual indulgence, 
its lust of dishonorable gain, its base pandering to appetite, 
already too strong; and in that struggle he saw your 
weight ostentatiously thrown into the scale of open and 
contemptuous disregard of the moral sense of the State. 
I well remember when, from a pulpit constantly boasting 
that its new creed had thrown away a formal and hollow 
faith and brought in the wholesome doctrine of works, 
you painted, so vividly, how hard it is for young men to 
say " No." Is this. Sir, the method you choose to illus- 
trate the practical value of the new faith, and this the help 
you extend to the faltering virtue of your pupils, giving 
the sanction of your character and office to the prince of 
rumsellers and law-breakers, and flinging insult on one 
of the noblest reforms of the age ? 

I admit the right and duty of minorities to disregard im- 
moral or unconstitutional laws. But no one ever though 
the prohibitory law unmoral, and you, Mr. Chief Justice, 
have affirmed its constitutionality. Neither do I now ar- 
raign you, Gentlemen, for your private habit of wine-drink- 



AND PRESIDENT WALKER. 241 

ing. I do not complain that a judge, who sees so much 
crime come from it, still gives it his countenance ; that a 
clergyman — the chief apostle of whose faith declared he 
would eat no meat while the world stood, if so doing made 
his brother to offend — still throws that stumbling-block 
in the way of his pupils. But I arraign the Chief Justice 
of Massachusetts, and the President of Harvard Univer- 
sity, because, when the rum interest of the State is mar- 
shalling its strength to beat down a good and constitutional 
law by gross, open, and avowed disobedience, they are 
found lending their names, character, and office to give re- 
spectability to the grog-shop whose wealth enables it to 
lead that dishonorable and disloyal effort. As a citizen, I 
claim that you disgraced your places, if not yourselves ; 
and I hope the day will come when such insult by such 
high officers to any statute of the Commonwealth, much 
more to one representing its highest moral purpose, will 
be deemed cause enough to impeach the one and remove 
the other. 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
August 1, 1859. 



16 



IDOLS.* 



MR. PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLE- 
]\IEN : I feel half inclined to borrow a little wit 
from an article in a late number of the Atlantic JNIonthly, 
— "My Double, and how he undid me," — and say, "I 
agree entirely with the gentleman who has just taken his 
seat." [Laughter.] " So much has been said, and so 
well said, that I feel there is no need of my occupying 
your attention." [Renewed laughter.] But then I should 
lose the hearty satisfaction it gives me to say with what 
delight I stand upon this platform, and how sincerely I 
appreciate the honor you do me, Mr. Chairman, by allow- 
ing me to aid in opening this course of lectures. I know. 
Sir, that you hoped, as I did, that this post would be filled 
by our great Senator, who seeks health on a foreign soil. 
No one laments more sincerely than I do that he felt it 
impossible and inconsistent with his other duties to be 
here. It is not too much to say that the occasion was 
worthy of a word even from Charles Sumner. [Hearty 
applause.] 

Appreciating the lyceum system as I do, looking upon 
it as one of the departments of the national school, truly 
American in its origin, and eminently republican in its 
character and end, I feel how eloquently his voice would 
have done it justice. For this is no common evening, Mr. 
President. The ^reat boast of New Eno;land is liberal 

* Fraternity Lecture delivered in Boston, October 4, 1859 



rooLS. 243 

culture and toleration. Easier to preacli than to practise ! 
Many Ijceums have opened their doors to men of different 
shades of opinion, and some few have even granted a fair 
amount of liberty in the choice of subject, and the expres- 
sion of individual opinion. None of us can forget, on such 
an occasion as this, the eminently catholic spirit and brilliant 
success of that course of Antislavery Lectures in the winter 
of 1854 and 1855, which we owed chiefly to the energy 
and to the brave and Hberal spirit of Dr. James W. Stone. 
But you go. Gentlemen, an arrow's flight beyond all ly- 
ceums ; for, recognizing the essential character of civiliza- 
tion, you place upon your platform the representatives of 
each sex and of both races. Yes, Ladles and Gentlemen, 
you will listen to consummate eloquence, never heard in 
Boston before from the lyceum platform, because " guilty 
of a skin not colored like our own." [Applause.] And 
you will listen, besides, to woman, gracefully standing on 
a platform which boasts itself the source of national educa- 
tion. For decent justice has not been done to woman, in 
regard to her influence, either upon literature or society ; 
and I welcome with inexpressible delight the inauguration 
of a course of lectures national and American in the 
proper sense of the words. 

There are men who prate about " nationality," and " the 
empire," and " manifest destiny," — using brave words, 
when their minds rise no higher than some petty mass of 
white States making money out of cotton and corn. My 
idea of American nationality makes it the last best growth 
of the thoughtful mind of the century, treading under foot 
sex and race, caste and condition, and collecting on the 
broad bosom of what deserves the name of an empire, 
under the shelter of noble, just, and equal laws, all races, 
all customs, all religions, all languages, all literature, and 
all ideas. I remember, a year or two ago, they told us of 
a mob at Milwaukie that forced a man to brino; out the 



body of his wife, born in Asia, — which, according to the 
custom of her forefathers, he was about to burn, — and 
compelled him to submit to American funeral rites, which 
his soul abhorred. The sheriff led the mob, and the press 
of the State vindicated the act. This is not my idea of 
American civilization. They will show you at Rome the 
stately column of the Emperor Trajan. Carved on its 
Odter surface is the triumphal march of the Emperor, 
when he came back to Rome, leading all nations, all 
tongues, all customs, all races, in the retinue of his con- 
quest ; and they traced it on the eternal marble, circling 
the pillar from base to capital. Just such is my idea 
of the empire, broad enough and brave enough to admit 
both sexes, all creeds, and all tongues in the triumphal 
procession of this great daughter of the west of the At- 
lantic. [Loud applause.] That is the reason why I hail 
this step in Boston, — the brain of the Union, — saying 
to the negro and to woman, " Take your place among the 
teachers of American Democracy." [Applause.] 

I said justice had never been done to woman for her 
influence upon literature and society. Society is the nat- 
ural outgrowth of the New Testament, and yet nothing 
deserving of the name ever existed in Europe until, two 
centuries ago, in France, woman called it into being. So- 
ciety, — the only field where the sexes have ever met on 
terms of equahty, the arena where character is formed 
and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, 
th»? crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a 
school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of am- 
bition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps 
real merit, the power that gives government leave to 
be, and outruns the lazy Chm^h in fixing the moral 
sense of the age, — who shall fitly describe the lofty 
place of this element in the history of the last two centu- 
ries ? Who shall deny that, more than anything else, it 



IDOLS. 245 

deserves tKe name of the most controlling element in the 
history of the two centuries just finished ? And yet this 
is the realm of woman, the throne which, like a first con- 
queror, she founded and then filled. 

So with literature. The literature of three centuries 
ago is not decent to be read; we expurgate it. Within 
a hundred years, woman ha;^ become a reader, and for that 
reason, as much or more than anything else, literature has 
sprung to a higher level. No need now to expurgate all 
you read. Woman, too, is now an author ; and I under- 
take to say that the literature of the next century will be 
richer than the classic epochs, for that cause. Truth is 
one forever, absolute ; but opinion is tinith filtered through 
the moods, the blood, the disposition, of the spectator. 
Man has looked at creation, and given us his impressions, 
in Greek literature and English, one-sided, half-way, all 
awry. Woman now takes the stand to give us her views 
of God's works and her own creation ; and exactly in pro- 
portion as woman, though equal, is eternally different from 
man, just in that proportion will the literature of the next 
century be doubly rich, because we shall have both sides. 
You might as well plant yourself in the desert, under the 
changeless gray and blue, and assert that you have seen 
all the wonders of God's pencil, as maintain that a male 
literature, Latin, Greek, or Asiatic, can be anything but a 
half part, poor and one-sided ; as well develop only mus- 
cle, shutting out sunshine and color, and starving the flesh 
from your angular limbs, and then advise men to scorn 
Titian's flesh and the Apollo, since you have exhausted 
manly beauty, as think to stir all the depths of music with 
only half the chords. [Applause.] The diapason of hu- 
man thought was never struck till Christian culture sum- 
moned woman into the republic of letters ; and experience 
as well as nature tells us, " what God hath joined, let not 
man put asunder." [Applause.] 



246 ^IDOLS. 

I welcome woman, therefore, to the platform of the 
world's teachers, and I look upon the world, in a very 
important sense, as one great school. ' As Humboldt said, 
ten years ago, " Governments, religion, property, books, 
are nothing but the scaffolding to build a man. Earth 
holds up to her Master no fruit but the finished man." 
Education is the only interest worthy the deep, control- 
ling anxiety of the thoughtful man. To change Bryant a 

little : 

" The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, 
The venerable woods, rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green, and, poured round all 
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
Arc but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great school of man." 

It is in this light and for this value that I appreciate the 
lyceum. We have four sources of education in this coun- 
try, — talk, literature, government, religion. The lyceum 
makes one and the most important element of each. It is 
a church, without a creed, and with a constant rotation of 
clergymen. [Applause.] It teaches closer ethics than 
the pulpit. Let lyceum committees debate whether they 
shall invite Theodore Parker, or theological papers scold 
because Beecher stands on your platform, and out of such 
debate the people will pick a lesson of toleration better, 
more real, and more impressive than Locke's Treatise or 
a dozen sermons could give them. Responsibility teaches 
as nothing else can. That is God's great motor power. 
When your horse cannot move his load, throw a sack of 
grain on his back and he draws easily on. He draws by 
weio-ht, not by muscle. Give the masses nothing to do, 
and they will topple down thrones and cut throats ; give 
them the government, as here, and they will make pulpits 
useless and colleges an impertinence. It is the best part 



IDOLS. 247 

of literature, too, for it is the only part that is vital. I 
value letters. I thank God that I was taught for many 
years ; enough to see inside the sham. 

The upper tier of letters is mere amateur ; does not 
understand its own business. William H. Prescott would 
have washed his hand twice, had Walker the filibuster 
grasped it unwittingly ; but he sits down in his study and 
writes the history of filibusters, respectable only because 
they died three hundred years ago ! He did not know 
that he was the mere annalist of the Walkers and Jeffer- 
son Davises of that age. [Applause.] 

[In this connection, Mr. Phillips referred to Bunyan and 
to Shakespeare, by way of illustrating his point that the 
literature which is of use is the literature that is not hon- 
ored as such when it is written.] 

So it is with 2;overnment. Government arrogates to it- 
self that it alone forms men. As well might the man down 
here in the court-house, who registers the birth of children, 
imao;ine that he was the father of all the children he rea^is- 
ters. [Loud laughter.] Everybody knows that govern- 
ment never began anything. It is the whole world that 
thinks and governs. Books, churches, govenunents, are 
what we make them. France is Catholic, and has a pope ; 
but she is the most tolerant country in the world in mat- 
ters of religion. New England is Protestant,* and has 
toleration written all over her statute-book ; but she has a 
pope in every village, and the first thing that tests a boy's 
courage is to dare to differ from his father. [Applause.] 
Popes ! why, we have got two as signal popes as they had 
in Europe three centuries ago, — there is Bellows at 
Avignon and Adams at Kome. [Great merriment, fol- 
lowed by loud applause.] So with government. Some 
think government forms men. Let us take an example. 

Take Sir Robert Peel and Webster as measures and 
examples ; two great men, remarkably alike. Neither of 



248 ^^toOLS. 

them ever had an original idea. [Laughter.] Neither 
kept long any idea he borrowed. Both borrowed from 
any quarter, high or low, north or south, friend or enemy. 
Both were weathercocks, not winds ; creatures, not crea- 
tors. Yet Peel died England's idol, — the unquestioned 
head of the statesmen of the age ; Webster the disgraced 
and bankrupt chief of a broken and ruined party. Why ? 
Examine the difference. Webster borrowed free trade of 
Calhoun, and tariff of Clay ; took his constitutional prin- 
ciples from Marshall, his constitutional learning from 
Story, and his doctrine of treason from Mr. George Tick- 
nor Curtis [laughter] ; and he followed Channing and 
Garrison a little way, then turned doughface in the wake 
of Douglas and Davis [applause and a few hisses] ; at 
first, with Algernon Sidney (my blood boils yet as I think 
how I used to declaim it), he declared the best legacy he 
could leave his children was free speech and the example 
of using it ; then of Preston S. Brooks and Legree he 
took lessons in smothering discussion and hunting slaves. 
In 1820, when the world was asleep, he rebuked the slave- 
trade ; in 1850, when the battle was hottest, he let 
Everett omit from his works all the best antislavery ut- 
terances ! 

Sir Robert Peel was just like him. He " changed 
every opinion, violated" (so says one of the Reviews) 
" every pledge, broke up every party, and deserted every 
colleague he ever had," yet his sun went down in glory. 
Why ? Because his step was ever onward ; he lived to 
learn. Every change was a sacrifice, and he could truly 
use, in 1829, the glorious Latin Webster borrowed of him, 
" Vera pro gratis,^^ — "I tell you unwelcome truths But 
Webster's steps, crab-like, were backwards. [Applause 
and hisses.] Hisses ! well, " Because thou art virtuous, 
shall there be no more cakes and ale ? " Because you 
have your prejudices, shall there be no history written ? 



IDOLS. ii49 

Our task is unlike that of some recent meetings, — His- 
tory^ not flattery. [Applause.] Webster moved by com- 
pulsion or calculation, not by conviction. He sunk from 
free trade to a tariff; from Chief Justice Marshall to 
Mr. George Ticknor Curtis ; from Garrison to Douglas ; 
from Algernon Sidney to the slave overseers. I read in 
this one of the dangers of our form of government. As 
Tocqueville says so wisely, '' The weakness of a Democ- 
racy is that, unless guarded, it merges in despotism." 
Such a life is the first step, and half a dozen are the 
Niagara carrying us over. 

But both "builded better than they knew.' Both 
forced the outward world to think for itself, and become 
statesmen. No man, says D'Israeli, ever weakened gov- 
ernment so much as Peel. Thank Heaven for that 1 — so 
much gained. Changing every day, their admirers were 
forced to learn to think for themselves. In the country 
once I lived with a Democrat who never had an opinion 
on the day's news till he had read the Boston Post. 
[Laughter.] Such close imitation is a little too hard. 
Webster's retainers fell off into the easier track of doins 
their own thinking. A German, once sketching a Mid- 
dlesex County landscape, took a cow for his fixed point of 
perspective ; she moved, and his whole picture was a mud- 
dle. Following Peel and Webster was a muddle ; hence 
came the era of outside agitation, — and those too lazy to 
think for themselves at least took a fixed point for their 
political perspective, — Garrison or Charles Sumner, for 
instance. 

[Mr. Phillips continued by remarking that all the peo- 
ple had ever asked of government was, not to take a step 
ahead, not to originate anything, but only to undo its mis- 
takes, to take its foot from off its victim, take away its 
custom-houses, abolish its absurd and wicked legislation 
and free the slave. He then proceeded to urge upon his 



250 IDOLS. 

hearers the importance of free individual thought, — the 
questioning of whatever came before" us, with an honest 
desire and effort to reach truth.] He said : — 

We shall have enough to do if we do our duty. The 
world is awake, — some wholly, and some only half. 
Men who gather tlieir garments scornfully and close about 
them when their fellows offer to express sympathy for the 
bravest scholar and most Christian minister the liberal 
New England sects know, — these timid little souls make 
daily uproar in the market-place, crying for a Broad 
Church, a Broad Church, — and one who lives by ven- 
turing a bold theory to-day, and spending to-morrow in 
taking it back, finding that he has been 

" Dropping buckets into empty wells, 
And growing old in drawing nothing out," 

assures you that it is not cowardice, but lack of candles 
and of a liturgy, that makes him useless ; and, kind-souled 
man, he apologizes, and begs us not to be startled with his 
strange new views, having lived so long in the thin air of 
his own vanity that he does not know we have had a broad 
Church for fifteen years, — broad enough for all races and 
colors, all sects, creeds, and parties, for heads and hearts 
too ; broad enough to help the poor, teach the ignorant, 
shield the weak, raise the fallen, and lift the high higher, 
to honor God and earn the hate of bad men, — ministered 
to by one whose broad diocese is bounded on the north by 
the limits of habitable land, runs west with civilization, 
and east with the Eno;lish lanffuao-e, and on the south 
stretches to the line where men stop thinking and live 
only to breathe and to steal. [Loud applause.] 

This Broad-Church reformer knows his place so little, 
that he sneers at spiritualism and socialism, as " vices 
entitled to no terms." One, an honest effort, however 
mistaken, to make all men wholly and really brothers in 
life, property, and thought ; and the other, that reaching 



IDOLS. 251 

into the land of spirit which has stirred the heart and 
roused the brain of the best men of all ages, and given to 
literature its soul. Does he give no heed to that profound 
maxim of Coleridge, — " There are errors which no wise 
man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability 
that they may be the refraction of some great truth still 
below the horizon " ? 

Yes, this " Broad Church " ! — humanity would weep 
if it ever came, for one of its doctrines is, that the statute- 
book is more binding than the Sermon on the Mount, and 
that the rights of private judgment are a curse. Save us 
from a Church not broad enough to cover woman and the 
slave, all the room being kept for the grog-shop and the 
theatre, — provided the one will keep sober enough to 
make the responses, and the other Avill lend its embroid- 
ered rags for this new baby-house. [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] 

The lionors we grant mark how high we stand, and 
they educate the future. The men we honor, and the 
maxims we lay down in measuring our favorites, show the 
level and morals of the time. Two names have been in 
every one's mouth of late, and men have exhausted lan- 
guage in trying to express their admiration and their 
respect. The courts have covered the grave of Mr. 
Choate with eulogy. Let us see what is their idea of a 
great lawyer. We are told that " he worked hard,'* 
" he never neglected his client," " he flung over the 
discussions of the forum the grace of a rare scholarship,'* 
" no pressure or emei'gency ever stirred him to an 
unkind word." A ripe scholar, a profound lawyer, a 
faithful servant of his client, a gentleman. This is a good 
record surely. May he sleep in peace ! What he earned, 
God grant he may have ! But the bar that seeks to claim 
for such a one a place among great jurists must itself be 
weak indeed ; for this is only to make him out the one-eyed 



252 IDOLS. 

monarch of the blind. Not one high moral trait specified ; 
not one patriotic act mentioned ; not t)ne patriotic service 
even claimed. Look at Mr. Webster's idea of what a 
lawyer should be in order to be called great, in the sketch 
he drew of Jeremiah Mason, and notice what stress he 
lays on the religious and moral elevation, and the glorious 
and high purposes which crowned his life ! Nothing of 
this now! I forget. Mr. Hallett did testify for Mr. 
Choate's religion [laughter and applause] ; but the law 
maxim is, that a witness should be trusted only in matters 
he understands, and that evidence, therefore, amounts to 
nothing. [Merriment.] Incessant eulogy ; but not a 
word of on€ effort to lift the yoke of cruel or unequal 
legislation from the. neck of its victim ; not one attempt to 
make the code of his country wiser, purer, better ; not one 
effort to bless his times or breathe a higher moral purpose 
into the community ; not one blow struck for right or 
for liberty, while the battle of the giants was going on 
about him ; not one patriotic act to stir the hearts of his 
idolaters ; not one public act of any kind whatever about 
whose merit friend or foe could even quarrel, unless when 
he scouted our great charter as a " glittering generality," 
or jeered at the philanthropy which tried to practise the 
Sermon on the Mount ! When Cordus, the Roman Sen- 
ator, whom Tiberius murdered, was addressing his fellows, 
he began : " Fathers, they accuse me of illegal words ; 
plain proof that there are no illegal deeds with which to 
charge me." So with these eulogies, — words, nothing 
but words ; plain proof that there were no deeds to 
praise. 

The divine can tell us nothino; but that he handed a 
chair or a dish as nobody else could [laughter] ; in poli- 
tics, we are assured he did not wish to sail outside of 
Daniel Webster ; and the Cambridge Professor tells his 
pupils, for their special insti'uction, that he did not dare to 



IDOLS. 253 

think in religion, for fear he should differ from South-side 
Adams ! [Loud laughter and applause.] The Professor 
strains his ethics to prove that a good man may defend a 
bad man. Useless waste of labor I In Egypt, travellerb 
tell us that the women, wholly naked, are very careful to 
veil their faces. So the Professor strains his ethics to 
cover this one fault. Useless, Sir, while the whole head 
is sick and the whole heart faint. 

Yet this is the model which Massachusetts offers to the 
Pantheon of the great jurists of the world ! 

Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence, 
— on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of 
every age and clime, — and let us see what part New 
England — Puritan, educated, free New England — would 
bear in the pageant. Rome points to a colossal figure and 
says, " That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Cara- 
calla murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer 
to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death, rather than 
sully his lips with the atrocious plea ; and that is Ulpian, 
who, aiding his prince to put the army below the law, was 
massacred at the foot of a weak, but virtuous throne." 

And France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying, 
" That is D'Aguesseau, worthy, when he went to face an 
enraged king, of the farewell his wife addressed him, — 
' Go ! forget that you have a wife and children to ruin, 
and remember only that you have France to save.' " 

England says, " That is Coke, who flung the laurels of 
eighty years in the face of the first Stuart, in defence of 
the people. Tliis is Selden, on every book of whose library 
you saw written the motto of which he lived worthy, 
' Before everything, Liberty ! ' That is Mansfield, silver- 
tongued, who proclaimed, 

* Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free/ 

This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synony- 



254 IDOLS. 

mous with justice, and succeeded in making life and prop- 
erty safer in every city of the empire, ^^nd that is Erskine, 
whose eloquence, spite of Lord Eldon and George III., 
made it safe to speak and to print." 

Then New England shouts, " This is Choate, who made 
it safe to murder ; and of whose health thieves asked before 
they began to steal." 

Boston liad a lawyer once, Avorthy to stand in that Pan- 
theon ; one whose untiring energy held up the right arm 
of Horace Mann, and made this age and all coming ones 
his debtors ; one whose clarion voice and life of consistent 
example waked the faltering pulpit to its duty in the cause 
of temperance, laying on that altar the hopes of his young 
ambition ; one whose humane and incessant efforts to make 
the penal code worthy of our faith and our age ranked his 
name with Mcintosh and Romilly, with Bentham, Beccaria, 
and Livingston. Best of all, one who had some claim to 
say, with Selden, '' Above all things, Liherty^^ for in the 
slave's battle his voice was of the bravest, — Robert Ran- 
toul. [Prolonged and hearty plaudits.] He died crowned 
with the laurels both of the Forum and Senate-house. The 
Suffolk Bar took no note of his death. No tongue stirred 
the air of the courts to do him honor. " When vice is 
useful, it is a crime to be virtuous," says the Roman prov- 
erb. Of that crime. Beacon Street, State Street, and 
Andover had judged Rantoul guilty. 

The State, for the second time in her history, offers a 
pedestal for the statue of a citizen. Such a step deserves 
thought. On this let us dare to think. Always think 
twice when saints and sinners, honest men and editors, 
agree in a eulogy. [Laughter.] All wonders deserve 
investigation, specially when men dread it. 

No man criticises when private friendship moulds the 

lOved form in 

" Stone that breathes and struggles. 
Or brass that seems to speaJL'' 



IDOLS. 255 

Let Mr. Webster's friends crowd their own halls and 
grounds with his bust and statue. That is no concern of 
ours. But when they ask the State to join in doing him 
honor, we are natives of Massachusetts, and claim the 
right to express an opinion. 

It is a grave thing wlien a State puts a man among her 
jewels, — especially one whose friends frown on discus- 
sion, — the glitter of whose fame makes doubtful acts look 
heroic. One paper, a tea-table critic, warns a speaker not 
born in the State to cease his criticism of the Webster 
statue. I do not know why Massachusetts may not Im- 
port critics as well as heroes ; for, let us be thankful, 
Webster was no Boston boy. But be sure you exercise 
your right to think now. 

His eulogy has tasked the ripest genius and the heartiest 
zeal. Some men say his eulogist has no heart. That is a 
mistake and cruel Injustice ! As the French wit said of 
Fontenelle, he " has as good a heart as can be made out of 
brains." [Laughter.] No matter what act Webster did, 
no matter how foul the path he trod, he never lacked some 
one to gild it with a Greek anecdote, or hide it in a blaze 
of declamation ! I do not say the deed was always whit- 
ened, but surely it was something that the eulogist shared 
the stain. They say in England that when Charles X., an 
exile in England, hunted there, others floundered through 
mud and water as they cottFd, but the exiled king was fol- 
lowed by a valet who flung himself down In his path and 
Charles walked over him as Indifferently as if he had really 
been a plank. How clean the king kept, I do not know. 
The valet got very muddy. A striking picture of Web- 
ster and his eulomsts ! 

His bronze figure stands on the State-House Green. 
Standing there, it reminds me of some lines, written In an 
album by Webster, when asked to place his name under 
that of John Adams : — 



256 ^>DOLS. 

** If by his name I write my own, 
*T will take me where I am not known ; 
The cold salute will meet ray ear, — 
* Pray, stranger, how did you come here 1 ' " 

In the printed speech of Mr. Everett, you will find three 
feet, — exactly one yard, — by newspaper measurement, 
about the Northeastern Boundary map with a red line on it ! 
but not a line, or hardly one, relating to the great treason 
of the 7th of March, 1850. The words he dared to speak, 
his friends dare not repeat ; the life he dared to live, his 
friends dare not describe, at the foot of his statue ! To 
mention now what he thought his great achievement will 
be deemed unkind ! 

Mr. Everett's silence was wise. He could not blame ; 
nature denied him the courage. He was too wary to 
praise, for he recollected the French proverb, " Some 
compliments are curses." So he obeyed the English 
statesman's rule, " When you have nothing to say, be 
sure and say nothing." 

But that is the printed speech. It seems some meddle- 
some fellow stood within reach of the speaker, and actu- | 
ally circulated, it is said, petitions for the removal of the 
statue from the public grounds. Then the orator forgot 
his caution, and interpolated a few unpremeditated sen- 
tences, "very forcible and eloquent," says the press, spe- 
cially intended for this critic ; ^ tei'ming this impudent med- 
dler " Mr. Immaculate," and quoting for his special benefit 
the parable of the Pharisee and Publican, — " God be 
merciful to me a sinner ! " Singular eulogy, to make out 
his idol a miserable " sinner " ! [Laughter.] Is this the 
usual method, Mr. Chairman, of proving one's right to a 
statue ? The Publican repented, and was forgiven ; but 
is a statue, ten feet high, cast in bronze, a usual element 
uf forgiveness ? And, mark, the Publican repented. When 
did Mr. Webster repent, either in person or by the proxy 



IDOLS. 267 

of Mr. Edward Everett ? We have no such record. The 
sm is confessed, acknowledged, as a mistake at least ; but 
there 's no repentance ! 

Let us look a little into this doctrine of statues for sin- 
ners. Take Aaron Burr. Tell of his daring in Canada, 
his watch on the Hudson, of submissive juries, of his. 
touching farewell to the Senate. " But then there was 
that indiscretion as to Hamilton." Well, Mr. Immacu- 
late, remember "the Publican." Or suppose we take 
Benedict Arnold, — brave in Connecticut, gallant at Que- 
bec, recklessly daring before Burgoyne ! " But that little 
peccadillo at West Point ! " Think of " the Publican," 
Mr. Immaculate. Why, on this principle, one might claim 
a statue for Milton's Satan. He was brave, faithful to his 
party, eloquent, shrewd about many a map " with a red 
line on it " ! There 's only that trifle of the apple to for- 
give and forget in these generous and charitable days ! 
No, if he wants an illustration, with due humility, I can 
give the orator a great deal better one. Sidney Smith 
had a brother as witty as himself, and a great hater of 
O'Connell. " Bobus Smith " (for so they called him) 
had one day marshalled O'Connell's faults at a dinner- 
talk, when his opponent flung back a glowing record of 
the great Irishman's virtues. Smith looked down a mo- 
ment. "Well, such a man, — such a mixture; the ,only 
way would be to hang him first, and then erect a statue to 
him under the gallows." A disputed statue rising out of 
a sea of angry contempt, half-hearted admiration, and apol- 
ogetic eulogy, reminds me of the Frenchman tottering up, 
at eighty years old, to vote for Louis Bonaparte. " Why, 
lie is a scoundrel," said Victor Hugo. " True, — very 
true, — but he is a necessary scoundrel." 

Ah, as the Greek said, " many men know how to flat- 
ter, few men know how to praise." These Cambridge 
Professors and fair-weather eulogists have no ability to 

17 



258 ^>rDOLs. 

measure Webster, — either liis capacity or his faults. 
They were dazzled blind by the splendor of his endow- 
ments, they were lost in the tumult of his vices. Theo- 
dore Parker's estimate is the truest ever made. History 
will adopt it as her verdict. His head and heart were the 
only ones large enough to grasp the subject, and brave 
enough to paint it truly. [Enthusiastic applause.] The 
real admirer of Webster turns from these French daubs to 
find there the cool, truthful tone of Raphael, and feels 
that the statesman has met there his kindest critic, and the 
man his most appreciating judge. Accuse us not if we 
award him blame as well as praise. As I said just now, 
our task is history, not flattery. I know well that every 
statesman must compromise ; but, as Macaulay says, " A 
public man is often under the necessity of consenting to 
measures he dislikes, to save others he thinks important. 
But the historian is under no such necessity. On the 
contrary, it is one of his most sacred duties to point out 
CLEARLY the errors of those whose general conduct he 
approves." If this be true of '' error s^^^ how still more 
.sacred this duty when the question is one of treachery to 
Liberty herself ! 

Blame me not that I again open the record, Mr. Chair- 
man. His injudicious friends will not let him die. In- 
deed, the heavy yoke he laid on innocent and friendless 
victims frets and curses them yet too keenly to allow him 
to be forgotten. He reaps only what he sowed. In the 
Talmud, the Jews have a story that Og, King of Bashan, 
lifted once a great rock, to hurl it on the armies of Judah. 
God hollowed it in the middle, letting it slip over the 
giant's neck, there to rest while he lived. This man lifted 
the Fugitive-Slave Bill to hurl it, as at Syracuse, on the 
trembling and hunted slave, and God has hung it like 
a millstone about his neck forevermore. [Applause.] 
While the echoes of Everett's periods still lingered in our 



IDOLS. 259 

streets, as I stood with the fresh-prmted sheet of his eulogy 
in my hand, there came to me a man, successful after 
eight attempts, in flying from bondage. Week after week 
he had been in the woods, half starved, seeking in vain a 
shelter. For months he had pined in dungeons, waiting 
the sullen step of his master. At last God blessed his 
eighth eifort, and he stood in Boston, on his glad way from 
the vulture of the States to the safe refuge of English law. 
He showed me his broad bosom scarred all over with the 
branding-iron, his back one mass of record how often the 
lash had tortured him for his noble efforts to jyet free. As 
I looked at him, the empty and lying eulogy dropped from 
my nerveless hand, and I thanked God that statue and 
eulogy both were only a horrid nightmare, and that there 
were still roofs in Boston, safe shelter for these heroic 
children of God's right hand. [Prolonged cheering.] 

But you and I, Mr. Chairman, were born in Massachu- 
setts, and we cannot but remember that the character of 
the State is shown by the character of those it crowns. 
A brave old Enolishman tells us the Greeks " had officers 
who did pluck down statues if they exceeded due symme- 
try and proportion. We need such now," he adds, " to 
order monuments according to men's merits." Indeed we 
do ! Daniel Webster said, on Bunker Hill, in one of his 
most glorious bursts of eloquence : " That motionless shaft 
will be the most powerful of speakers. Its speech will be 
of civil and religious liberty. It will speak of patriotism 
and of courage. It will speak of the moral improvement 
and elevation of mankind. Decrepit age will lean against 
its base, and ingenuous youth gather round it, speak to 
each other of the glorious events with which it is con- 
nected, and exclaim, ' Thank God I also am an Ameri- 
can ! ' " It is a glorious lesson, and the noble old shaft 
tells it daily. 

But when ingenuous youth stand at his pedestal, what 
bliall they say ? " Consummate jurist I Alas that your 



260 ^fcOLS. 

latest effort was to sneer at a ' higlier law ' ! Most able 
and eloquent advocate ! could you find no other cause to 
plead than that of our lowest instmcts* against our highest 
and holiest sentiments ? Alas that your last and ablest 
argument was the duty of hunting slaves ! Sagacious 
statesmen ! Fated to die not very old, and yet hve long 
enough to see all the plans of your manhood become 
obsolete ideas, except just those you had abandoned ! 
Surely you were a great party leader ! for you found the 
Whig party strong, spent life in its service, and died 
prophesying its annihilation ; found it decent, at least in 
profession, left it despicable in utter shamelessness ; found 
it the natural ally of free labor and free speech, stirred it 
to a contest with its rival in servile bidding for South- 
ern fellowship, and left it despicable for the attempt, and 
still more despicable and ridiculous for its failure ! The 
curses of the poor have blighted your laurels. You were 
mourned in ceiled houses and the marts of trade ; but tlie 
dwellers in slave-huts and fugitives along the higliways 
thanked God, when you died, that they had one enemy 
the less. Wherever that terrible face turned, it carried 
gloom to the bondman. On how many a humble hearth 
did it cost the loftiest Christian principle to forbear calling 
down curses on your head ! 

" And yet your flatterers tell us this was the ' grandest 
growth of our soil and institutions ! ' tliis the noblest 
heart Massachusetts can offer to the world for a place 
beside the Phocions and the Hampdens, the Jays and the 
Fayettes ! Thank God, then, we are not Massachusetts 
men ! " 

When I think of the long term and wide reach of his 
influence, and look at the subjects of his spee^ihes, — the 
mere shells of history, drum-and-trumpet declamation, 
dry law, or selfish bickerings about trade, — when I 
think of his bartering the hopes of four million of bondmen 
for the chances of his private ambition, I recall the criti* 



IDOLS. 261 

cism on Lord Eldon, — " No man ever did liis race so 
mucli good as Eldon prevented.''^ Again, wlien I remem- 
ber the close of his life spent in ridiculing the antislavery 
movement as useless abstraction, moonshine, " mere rub- 
a-dub agitation," because it did not minister to trade and 
gain, methinks I seem to see written all over his statue 
Tocqueville's conclusion from his survey of French and 
American Democracy, — '' Tlie man ivlio seeks freedom for 
anything hut freedom's self is made to be a slave !^^ 

Monuments, anniversaries, statues, are schools, Mr. 
Webster tells us, wliose lessons sink deep. Is this man's 
life a lesson which the State can commend to her sons '^ 
Professor Felton, as usual, embalmed his idol in a Greek 
anecdote. It is a good storehouse. Let us open it. In 
that m-eat armiment Avhich oave us the two most consum- 
mate orations of antiquity, the question was whether 
Athens should grant Demosthenes a crown. He had fled 
from battle, and his counsels, though heroic, bi'ought the 
city to ruin. His speech is the masterpiece of all elo- 
quence. Of the accusation by ^schines, it is praise 
enough to say that it stands second only to that. In it 
-<Eschines warns the Athenians that in granting crowns 
they judged themselves, and were forming the characters 
of their children. His noble burst — 

To he fi€yi(rTOV, iav €Trepa)Ta>aLv vfjas ol veutrepoi npos ttoiov xPV t^^oo.' 
8ety/ia, &C. — 

is worth translating : — 

" Most of all, fellow-citizens, if your sons ask whose example 
they shall imitate, what will you say ? For you know well it is 
not music, nor the gymnasium, nor the schools that mould young 
men ; it is much more the public proclamations, the public exam- 
ple. If you take one whose life has no high purpose, one who 
mocks at morals, and crown him in the theatre, every boy who 
sees it is corrupted. When a bad man suffers his deserts, the 
people learn, — on the contrary, when a man votes against what 
is noble and just, [how exactly he describes this case !] and then 



262 IDOLS. 

comes home to teach his son, the boy will very properly say, 
* Your lesson is impertinent and a bore.* Beware, therefore, 
Athenians, remembering posterity will rejudge your judgment, 
and that the character of a city is determined by the character of 
the men it crowns." 

I recommend this page of jEschines to Mr. Felton. 

Has the State, then, no worthier sons, that she needs 
import such poor material ? Witliin her bosom rests the 
dust of Horace Mann, whose name hundreds of thousands 
of children on Western prairies, looking up to Massachu- 
setts teachers, learn to bless. He bears the sceptre of 
Massachusetts influence to the shores of the Pacific. 
When at the head of our Normal School, a colored girl 
was admitted, and the narrow prejudice of Newton closed 
every door against her, " Come to my table ; let my 
roof, then, be your home," said Mr. Mann. [Hearty ap- 
plause.] Antioch College staggered under $ 60,000 debt. 
One, bearing the form of a man, came to its President, and 
said, " I will pay one sixth, if you will promise me no negro 
shall enter its halls." " Let it perish first," was Horace 
Mann's reply. [Renewed and enthusiastic applause.] The 
Legislature are asked to put his statue opposite Webster's. 
O no. When the Emperor makes his horse a consul, 
honest men decline a share in the consulship. While that 
ill-used iron stands there, our State is in bad odor to offer 
statues to anybody. 

At Reval, one of the Hanse towns, they will show you, 
in their treasury, the sword which, two hundred years 
ago, beheaded a lawless Baron for daring to carry off his 
fugitive slave from the shelter of the city walls. Our 
great slave-hunter is beyond the reach of man's sword ; 
but if any noble soul in the State will stir our mother 
Massachusetts to behead his image, we will cherish the 
name of that true Massachusetts boy as sacredly as they 
keep the brave old sword at Reval. [Loud and prolonged 
applause.] 



HARPER'S FERRY.* 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : Of course I do not 
expect — speaking from this platform, and to you — 
to say anything on the vital question of the hour which 
you have not already heard. But, when a great question 
divides the community, all men are called upon to vote^ 
and I feel to-night that I am simply giving my vote. I am 
only saying " ditto " to what you hear from this platform 
day after day. And I would willingly have avoided, La- 
dies and Gentlemen, even at this last moment, borrowing 
this hour from you. I tried to do better by you. Like 
the Irishman in the story, I offered to hold the hat of 
Hon. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, [enthusiastic applause,] if 
he would only make a speech, and, I am sorry to say, 
he declines, most unaccountably, this generous offer. 
[Laughter.] So I must fulfil my appointment, and de- 
liver my lecture myself. 

" The Lesson of the Hour ? " I think the lesson of 
the hour is insurrection. [Sensation.] Insurrection of 
thought always precedes the insurrection of arms. The 
last twenty years have been an insurrection of thought. 
We seem to be entering on a new phase of this great 
American struggle. It seems to me that we have never 

* A Lecture delivered at Brookljrn, N. Y., Tuesday Evening, November 
1, 1859. Mr. Phillips was advertised to speak on " The Lesson of the 
Hour,'* in Henry Ward Beecher's Church. Hon. Thomas Corwin, witk 
others, was on the platform. 



264 HARPER'S FERRY. 

accepted, — as Americans, we have never accepted our 
own civilization. We have held back from the inference 
which we ought to have drawn from the admitted princi- 
ples which underlie our life. We have all the timidity of 
the Old World, when we think of the people ; we shrink 
back, trying to save ourselves from the inevitable might 
of the thoughts of the millions. The idea on the other 
side of the water seems to be, that man is created to be 
taken care of by somebody else. God did not leave him 
fit to go alone ; he is in everlasting pupilage to the 
wealthy and the educated. The religious or the comfort- 
able classes are an ever-present probate court to take care 
of him. The Old World, therefore, has always distrusted 
the average conscience, — the common sense of the mil- 
lions. 

It seems to me the idea of our civilization, underlying 
all American life, is, that men do not need any guardian. 
We need no safeguard. Not only the inevitable, but the 
best power this side of the ocean, is the vmfettered aver- 
age common sense of the masses. Institutions, as we are 
accustomed to call them, are but pasteboard, and intended 
to be, ao;ainst the thouo;ht of the street. Statutes 3ve mere 
milestones, telling how far yesterday's thought had trav- 
elled ; and the talk of the sidewalk to-day is the law of the 
land. You may regret this ; but the fact stands ; and 
if our fathers foresaw the full effect of their principles, 
they must have planned and expected it. With us. Law 
is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living 
public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and stat- 
utes are waste paper, lack all executive force. You may 
frame them strono; as lanouaoe can make ; but once chano-e 
public feeling, and through them or over them rides the 
real wish of the people. The good sense and conscience 
of the masses are our only title-deeds and police force. 
The Temperance cause, the antislavery movement, and 



HARPER'S FERRY. fjg^ 

jour Barnburner party prove this. You may s,Vh for a 
strong government, ancl>ored in the convictions of past 
centuries, and able to protect tl,e minority a..ainst tlie 
majonty,-abIe to defy the ignorance, the anistake, or the 
passion, as well .as the high purpose, of the present hour • 
you may prefer the unchanging terra firma of despotism; 
but stdl the fact remains, that we are launched on the 
ocean of an unchained democracy, with no safety but in 
those laws of gravUy which bind the ocean in its bed, -the 
.nstmct,ve love of right in the popular heart, -the divine 
beet anchor, that the race gravitates towards right, and 
that the right is always safe and best 
_ Somen-hat briefly stated, such is the idea of American 
civilization; uncompromising faith - in the average self- 
ishness, 1 you choose -of all classes, neutralizing each 
other, a,,d tending towards that fair play which Saxons 
ove. But It seems to me that, on all questions, we dread 
thought; we shrink behind something; we acknowledge 
ourselves unequal to the sublime faith of our fethers ; and 

state of public affairs is, that Americans dread to look their 
real position in the face. 

They say in Ireland that every Irishman thinks he was 
born sixty days too late, [laughter,] and that the world 
owes him sixty days. The consequence is, when a trader 
says such a thing is so much for cash, the Irishman thinks 
cash means to him a bill for sixty days. [Laughter.] So 
is witli Americans. They have no idea rf abiute 
n«ht. They were born since 1787, and absolute rioht 
nieans the truth diluted by a strong decoction of Sie 
Constitution of '89. They breathe thlt atmosphere ; thev 
lo not want to sail outside of it ; they do not' attempt t; 
reason ou side of it. Poisoned with printer's-ink, or 
choked with cotton-dust, they .stare at absolute ri.ht as 
the dream of madmen. For the last twenty years there 



266 HARPER'S FERRY. 

has been going on, more or less heeded and understood in 
different States, an insurrection of id^as against this hm- 
ited, cribbed, cabined, isolated American civilization, an 
insurrection to restore absolute right. If you said to an 
American, for instance, anything in regard to temper- 
ance, slavery, or anything else, in the course of the last 
twenty years, — anything about a principle, — he ran back 
instantly to the safety of such a principle, to the possibility 
of its existing with a particular sect, with a church, with a 
party, with a constitution, with a law. He had not yet 
raised himself to the level of daring to trust justice, which 
is the preliminary consideration to trusting the people ; for 
whether native depravity be true or not, it is a trutli, 
attested by all history, that the race gravitates towards 
justice, and that, making fair allowance for differences of 
opinion, there is an inherent, essential tendency to the 
great English principle of fair play at the bottom of our 
natures. [Loud applause.] The Emperor Nicholas, it is 
said, ordered his engineers to lay down for him a railway 
from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and presently the en- 
gineers brought him a large piece of card-paper, on which 
was laid down, like a snake, the designed path for the iron 
locomotive between the two capitals. " What 's that ? " 
said Nicholas. "That 's the best road," was the reply. 
" What do you make it crooked for ? " " Why, we turn 
this way to touch this great city, and to the left to reach 
that immense mass of people, and to the right again to 
suit the business of that district." " Yes." The Em- 
peror turned the card over, made a new dot for Mos- 
cow, and another for St. Petersburg, took a ruler, 
made a straight line, and said, " Build me that road." 
[Laughter.] 

"But what will become of this depot of trade ? of 
that town ? " "I don't know ; they must look out for 
themselves." [Cheers.] And intelligent democracy 



HARPER'S FERRY. 207 

says of slavery, or of a church, " This is justice, and 
that iniquity ; the track of God's tliunderbolt is a straight 
line from one to the other, and the church or state that 
cannot stand it must get out of the way." [Cheers.] 
Now our object for twenty years has been to educate the 
mass of the American people up to that level of moral 
life which shall recognize that free speech carried to this 
extent is God's normal school, educating the American 
mind, throwing upon it the grave responsibility of deciding 
a great question, and by means of that responsibility lift- 
ing it to a higher level of intellectual and moral hfe. 
Responsibility educates, and politics is but another name 
for God's way of teaching the masses ethics, under the 
responsibility of great present interest. To educate man 
is God's ultimate end and purpose in all creation. Trust 
the people with the gravest questions, and in the long run 
yon educate the race ; while, in the process, you secure, 
not perfect, but the best possible institutions. Now 
scholarship stands on one side, and, like your Brooklyn 
Eagle^ says, " This is madness ! " Well, poor man, he 
thinks so ! [Laughter.] The very difficulty of the whole 
matter is, that he does think so, and this normal school 
that we open is for him. His seat is on the lowest end of 
the lowest bench. [Laughter and applause.] But he 
only represents that very chronic distrust which pervades 
all that class, specially the timid educated mind of these 
Northern States. Anacharsis went into the forum at 
Athens, and heard a case argued by the great minds of 
the day, and saw the vote. He walked out into the 
streets, and somebody said to him, " What think you of 
Athenian liberty ? " "I tliink," said he, " wise men ar- 
gue causes, and fools decide them." Just what the timid 
scholar two thousand years ago said in the streets of 
Athens, that which calls itself the scholarship of the Unit- 
ed States says to-day of poj)ular agitation, that it le*s wise 



268 HARPER'S FERRY. 

men argue questions, and fools decide them. But that 
unruly Athens, where fools decided Uie gravest questions 
of polity and right and wrong, where it was not safe to 
be just, and where property, which you had garnered u^: 
by the thrift and industry of to-day, might be wrung from 
you by the caprices of the mob to-morrow, — that very 
Athens probably secured the greatest human happiness 
and nobleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us 
the depths of philosophy : God lent to it the noblest intel- 
lects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the 
movmtain-peaks of the Old World ; while Egypt, the hun- 
ker conservative of antiquity, where nobody dared to dif- 
fer from the priest, or to be wiser than his grandfather, — 
where men pretended to be alive, though swaddled in the 
grave-clothes of creed and custom as close as their mum- 
mies in linen, — is hid in the tomb it inhabited ; and the 
intellect wdiich Athens has created for us digs to-day 
those ashes to find out what hunkerism kncAv and did. 
[Cheers.] Now my idea of American civilization is, that 
it is a second part, a repetition of that same sublime confi- 
dence ii: the public conscience and the public thought 
which made the groundwork of Grecian Democracy. 

We have been carrying on this insurrection of thought 
for thirty years. There have been various evidences of 
growth in education : I will tell you of one. The first 
evidence that a sinner, convicted of sin, and too blind or 
too lazy to reform, the first evidence he gives that his 
nature has been touched, is, that he becomes a hypocrite ; 
he has the grace to pretend to be something. Now the first 
evidence the American people gave of that commencing 
grace of hyj^ocrisy was this : in 1831, when we com- 
menced the antislavery agitation, the papers talked about 
slavery, bondage, American slavery, boldly, frankly, and 
bluntly. In a few years it sounded hard ; it had a grating 
eftect ; the toughest throat of the hardest Democrat felt ?♦ 



HARPER'S FERRY. 269 

as it came out. So they spoke of the " patriarchal insti- 
tution," [laughter,] then of the " domestic institution," 
[continued laughter,] and then of the *' pecuHar institu- 
tion," [laughter,] and in a year or two it got beyond that. 
Mississippi published a report from her Senate, in which 
she went a stride further, and described it as " economic 
subordination," and baptized it by statute " warranteeism." 
[Renewed laughter.] A Southern Methodist bishop was 
taken to task for holding slaves in reality, but his Metho- 
dist brethren were not courageous enough to say " slaves " 
right out in meeting, and so they advised the bishop to get 
rid of his "impediment" [loud laughter] ; and the late 
Mr. Rufus Choate, in the last Democratic canvass of my 
own State, undertaking and obliged to refer to the institu- 
tions of the South, and unwillino; that his old New Ens;- 
land lips, which had spoken so many glorious free truths, 
should foul their last days with the hated word, phrased it 
"a different type of industry." Now, hypocrisy — why, 
''it is the homage that Vice renders to Virtue." When 
men begin to weary of capital punishment, they banish 
the gallows inside the jail-yard, and let nobody see it 
without a special card of invitation from the sheriff. And 
so they have banished slavery into pet phrases and fancy 
flash-words. If, one hundred years hence, you should dig 
our Egyptian Hunkcrism up from the grave into which it 
is rapidly sinking, we should need a commentator of the 
true German blood to find out what all these queer, odd, 
peculiar imaginative paraphrases meant in this middle 
of the nineteenth century. This is one evidence of 
progress. 

I believe in moral suasion. The age of bullets is over. 
The age of ideas is come. I think that is the rule of our 
age. The old Hindoo dreamed, you know, that he saw 
the human race led out to its varied fortune. First, he 
saw men bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an 



270 HARPER'S FERRY. 

iron hand. But his dream changed on and on, until at 
last he saw men led by reins that came from the brain, 
and went back into an unseen hand. It was the type of 
governments ; the first despotism, palpable, iron ; and the 
last our government, a government of brains, a govern- 
ment of ideas. I believe in it, — in public opinion. 

Yet, let me say, in passing, I think you can make a bet- 
ter use of iron than forging it into chains. If you must 
have the metal, put it into Sharpe's rifles. It is a gi'eat 
deal better used that way than in fetters ; types are better 
than bullets, but bullets a thousand times rather than a 
clumsy statue of a mock great man, for hypocrites to kneel 
down and worship in a State-House yard. [Loud and 
renewed cheers, and great hissing.] I am so unused to 
hisses lately, that I have forgotten what I had to say. 
[Laughter and hisses.] I only know I meant what I 
did say. 

My idea is, public opinion, literature, education, a3 
governing elements. 

Some men seem to think that our institutions are neces- 
sarily safe, because we have free schools and cheap books, 
and a public opinion that controls. But that is no evi- 
dence of safety. India and China had schools for fifteen 
hundred years. And books, it is said, were once as cheap 
in Central and Northern Asia as they are in New York, 
But they have not secured liberty, nor a controlling pub- 
lic opinion to either nation. Spain for three centuries had 
municipalities and town governments, as independent and 
self-supporting, and as representative of thought, as New 
England or New York has. But that did not save Spain. 
Tocqueville says that, fifty years before the great rev- 
olution, public opinion was as omnipotent in France as it 
is to-day, but it did not make France free. Yon cannot 
save men by machinery. What India and France and 
Spain wanted was live men, and that is what we want 



HARPEB'S FERRY. 271 

to-day ; men who are willing to look their own destiny, 
and their own responsibilities, in the face. " Grant me to 
see, and Ajax asks no more," was the prayer the great 
poet put into the lips of his hero in the darkness which 
overspread the Grecian camp. All we want of American 
citizens is the opening of their own eyes, and seeing things 
as they are. The intelligent, thoughtful, and determined 
gaze of twenty millions of Christian people there is noth- 
ing, — no institution wicked and powerful enough to be 
capable of standing against it. In Keats's beautiful poem 
of " Lamia," a young man had been led captive by a 
phantom girl, and was the slave of her beauty, until the 
old teacher came in and fixed his thoughtful eye upon the 
figure, and it vanished. 

You see the great Commonwealth of Virginia fitly 
represented by a pyramid standing upon its apex. A 
Connecticut-born man entered at one corner of her do- 
minions, and fixed his cold gray eye upon the government 
of Virginia, and it almost vanished in his very gaze. For 
it seems that Virginia, for a week, asked leave " to be " 
of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. [Cheers and ap 
plause.] Connecticut has sent out many a schoolmaster 
to the other thirty States ; but never before so grand a 
teacher as that Litchfield-born schoolmaster at Harper's 
Ferry, writing as it were upon the Natural Bridge, in the 
face of nations, his simple copy, — " Resistance to tyrants 
is obedience to God." [Loud cheers.] 

I said that the lesson of the hour was insurrection. I 
ought not to apply that word to John Brown of Osawa- 
tomie, for there was no insurrection in his case. It is a 
great mistake to call him an insurgent. This principle 
that I have endeavored so briefly to open to you, of ab- 
solute right and wrong, states what ? Just this : " Com- 
monwealth of Virginia ! " There is no such thing. Law- 
less, brutal force is no basis of a government, in the true 



272 HARPER'S FERRY. 

sense of that word. Qu(b est eiiim civitas? asks Cicero. 
Omnis ne coyivcntus etiam ferorum ctjmmaniiun? Omnis 
ne etiam, fucjitivorum ac latronum congregata unum in 
locum multitudo ? certe negabis. No civil society, no 
government, can exist except on the basis of the wilHng 
submission of all its citizens, and by the performance of 
the duty of rendering equal justice between man and man. 
Whatever calls itself a government, and refuses that 
duty, or has not that assent, is no government. It is only 
a pirate ship. Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia ! 
She is only a chronic insurrection. I mean exactly what 
I say. I am weighing my words now. She is a pirate 
ship', and John Brown sails the sea a Lord High Admiral 
of the Almighty, with his commission to sink every pirate 
he meets on God's ocean of the nineteenth century. 
[Cheers and applause.] I mean literally and exactly 
what I say. In God's world there are no majorities, 
no minorities ; one, on God's side, is a majority. You 
have often heard here, doubtless, and I need not tell you, 
the ground of morals. The rights of that one man are as 
sacred as those of the miscalled Commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia. Virginia is only anotlier Algiers. The barbarous 
horde who gag each other, imprison women for teaching 
children to read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on the auc- 
tion-block, abolish marriage, condemn half their Avomen to 
prostitution, and devote themselves to the breeding of hu- 
man beings for sale, is only a larger and blacker Algiers. 
The only prayer of a true man for such is, " Gracious 
Heaven ! unless they repent, send soon their Exmouth 
and Decatur." John Brown has twice as much right to 
hang Governor Wise, as Governor Wise has to hang him. 
[Cheers and hisses.] You see I am talking of that abso- 
lute essence of things which lives in the sight of the Eter- 
nal and the Infinite ; not as men judge it in the rotten 
morals of the nineteenth century, among a herd of States 



HARPER'S FERRY. 273 

that calls itself an empire, because it raises cotton and sells 
slaves. What I say is this : Hai-per's Ferry was the only 
government in that vicinity. Look at the trial. Virginia, 
true to herself, lias shown exactly the same haste that the 
pirate does when he tries a man on deck, and runs him up 
to the yard-arm. Unconsciouslj she is consistent. Now 
you do not think this to-day, some of you, perhaps. 
But I tell you what absolute History shall judge of these 
forms and phantoms of ours. John Brown began his life, 
his public life, in Kansas. The South planted that seed ; 
it reaps the first fruit now. Twelve years ago, the great 
men in Washington, the Websters and the Clays, planted 
the Mexican war ; and they reaped their appropriate fruit 
in General Taylor and General Pierce pushing them from 
their statesmen's stools. The South planted the seeds of 
violence in Kansas, and taught peaceful Northern men 
familiarity with the bowie-knife and revolver. They 
planted nine hundred and ninety-nine seeds, and this is the 
first one that has flowered ; this is the first drop of the 
coming shower. People do me the honor to say, in some 
of the Western papers, that this is traceable to some 
teachings of mine. It is too much honor to such as me. 
Gladly, if it were not fulsome vanity, would I clutch this 
laurel of having any share in the great resolute daring of 
that man who flung himself against an empire in behalf of 
justice and hberty. They were not the bravest men who 
fought at Saratoga and Yorktown, in the war of 1776. O 
no! it was rather those who fluno; themselves at Lexino;- 
ton, few and feeble, against the embattled ranks of an 
empire, till then thought irresistible. Elderly men, in 
powdered wigs and red velvet, smoothed their ruffles, and 
cried, " Madmen ! " Full-fed custom-house clerks said, 
" A pistol-shot against Gibraltar ! " But Captain Ingra- 
ham, under the stars and stripes, dictating terms to the 
fleet of the Ca3sars, was only the echo of that Lexington 

18 



274 HARPER'S FERRY 

giiii. Harper's Ferry is the Lexington of to-day. Up to 
this moment, Brown's life has been on^ unmixed success. 
Prudence, skill, courage, thrift, knowledge of his time, 
knowledge of his opponents, undaunted daring, — he had 
all these. He was the man who could leave Kansas, and 
go into Missouri, and take eleven men, give them lib- 
erty, and bring them off on the horses which he carried 
with him, and two which he took as tribute from their 
masters in order to facilitate escape. Then, when he had 
passed his human proteges from the vulture of the United 
States to the safe shelter of the Eno;lish lion, this is the 
brave, frank, and sublime truster in God's right and abso- 
lute justice, who entered his name in the city of Cleveland, 
" John Brown, of Kansas," advertised there two horses 
for sale, and stood in front of the auctioneer's stand, noti- 
fying all bidders of — what some would think — the defect 
in the title. [Laughter.] But he added, with noncha- 
lance, when he told me the story, " They brought a very 
excellent price." [Laughter.] This is the man who, in 
the face of the nation, avowing his right, and laboring with 
what strength he had in behalf of the wronged, goes down 
to Harper's Ferry to follow up his work. Well, men say 
he failed. Every man has his Moscow. Suppose he did 
fail, every man meets his Waterloo at last. There are 
two kinds of defeat. Whether in chains or in laurels, 
Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bun- 
ker Hill a defeat ; but Liberty dates from it, though War- 
ren lay dead on the field. Men say the attempt did not 
succeed. No man can command success. Whether it 
was well planned, and deserved to succeed, we shall be 
able to decide when Brown is free to tell us all he knows. 
Suppose he did fail, in one sense, he has done a great deal 
still. Why, this is a decent country to live in now. 
[Laughter and cheers.] Actually, in this Sodom of ours, 
twenty-two men have been found ready to die for an idea* 



HARPER'S FERRY. 275 

God be thanked for John Brown, that he has discovered 
or created them ! [Cheers.] I should feel some pride, 
if I was in Europe now, in confessing that I was an 
American. [Applause.] We have redeemed the long 
infamy of sixty years of subservience. But look back a 
bit. Is there anything new about this ? Nothing at all. 
It is the natural result of antislavery teaching. For one, 
I accept it ; I hoped for it. I cannot say that I prayed 
for it ; I cannot say that I expected it. But at the same 
time, no sane man has looked upon this matter for twenty 
years, and supposed that we could go through this great 
moral convulsion, the great classes of society crashing and 
jostling against each other like frigates in a storm, and 
that there would not come such scenes as these. 

In 1835 it was the other way. Then it was my bull 
that gored your ox. Then ideas came in conflict, and 
men of violence, men who trusted in their own right 
hands, men who believed in bowie-knives, — such sacked 
the city of Philadelphia ; such made New York to be gov- 
erned by a mob ; Boston saw its mayor suppliant and 
kneehng to the chief of a broadcloth mob in broad day- 
light. It was all on that side. The natural result, the 
first result of this starting of ideas, is like people who get 
half awaked, and use the first weapons that lie at hand. 
The first show and unfolding of national life were the mobs 
of 1835. People said it served us right ; we had no right 
to the luxury of speaking our own minds ; it was too ex- 
pensive ; these lavish, prodigal, luxurious persons walking 
about here, and actually saying what they think. Wliy 
it was like speaking loud in the midst of the avalanches. 
To say " Liberty " in a loud tone, the Constitution of 
1789 might come down, — it would not do. But now 
things have changed. We have been talking thirty years. 
Twenty years we have talked everywhere, under all cir- 
we have been mobbed out of great cities. 



276 HARPER'S FERRY. 

and pelted out of little ones ; we have been abused by 
great men and by little papers. [La«ghter and applause.] 
What is the result ? The tables have been turned ; it is 
your bull that has gored my ox now. And men who still 
believe in violence, the five points of whose faith are the 
fist, the bowie-knife, fire, poison, and the pistol, are ranged 
on the side of Liberty, and, unwilling to wait for the slow 
but sure steps of thought, lay on God's altar the best they 
have. You cannot expect to put a real Puritan Presby- 
terian, as John Brown is, — a regular Cromwellian dug 
up from two centuries, — in the midst of our New England 
civilization, that dares not say its soul is its own, nor pro- 
claim that it is wrong to sell a man at auction, and not 
have him show himself as he is. Put a homid in the 
presence of a deer, and he springs at his throat if he is a 
true bloodhound. Put a Christian in the presence of a 
sin, and he will spring at its throat if he is a true Chris- 
tian. Into an acid we may throw white matter, but unless 
it is chalk, it will not produce agitation. So if in a world 
of sinners you were to put American Christianity, it would 
be calm as oil. But put one Christian, like John Brown 
of Osawatomie, and he makes the whole crystallize into 
riMit and wrono* and marshal themselves on one side or 
the other. God makes him the text, and all he asks of 
our comparatively cowaixily lips is to preach the sermon, 
and say to the American people that, whether that old 
man succeeded in a worldly sense or not, he stood a rep- 
resentative of law, of government, of right, of justice, of 
religion, and they were a mob of murderers who gathered 
about him, and sought to wreak vengeance by taking his 
life. The banks of the Potomac, doubly dear now to 
history and to man I The dust of Washington rests 
there ; and history will see forever on that river-side the 
brave old man on his pallet, whose dust, when God calls 
him hence, the Father of his Country would be proud to 



HAEPER'S FERRY. 277 

make room for beside his o^\ti. But if Virginia tyrants 
dare hang him, after this mockery of a trial, it will take two 
.more Washingtons at least to make the name of the State 
anything but abominable in time to come. [Applause and 
hisses.] Well, I say what I really think. [Clieers, and 
cries of " Good ! good ! "] George Washington was a great 
man. Yet I say what I really think. And I know. Ladies 
and Gentlemen, that, educated as you have been by the 
experience of the last ten years here, you would have 
thought me the silliest as well as the most cowardly man 
in the world, if I should have come, with my twenty 
years behind me, and talked about anything else to-night 
except that great example which one man has set us on 
the banks of the Potomac. You expected, of course, that 
I should tell you my real opinion of it. 

I value this element that Brown has introduced into 
American politics. The South is a great power, — no 
cowards in Virginia. [Laughter.] It was not cowardice. 
[Laughter.] Now, I try to speak very plain, but you 
will misunderstand me. There is no cowardice in Vir- 
ginia. The South are not cowards. The lunatics in the 
Gospel were not cowards when they said, "Art thou 
come to torment us before the time ? " [Laughter.] 
They were brave enough, but they saw afar off. They 
saw the tremendous power which was entering into that 
charmed circle ; they knew its inevitable victory. Virginia 
did not tremble at an old gray-headed man at Harper's 
Ferry ; they trembled at a John Brown in every man's 
own conscience. He had been there many years, and, 
like that terrific scene which Beckford has drawn for us in 
liis Hall of Ublis^ where the crowd runs around, each man 
with an incurable wound in his bosom, and agrees not to 
speak of it ; so the South has been running up and down 
its political and social life, and every man keeps his right 
hand pressed on the secret and incurable sore, with sua 



278 HARPER'S FERRY. 

understood agreement, in church and state, that it never 
shall be mentioned, for fear the great ghastly fabric should 
come to pieces at the talismanic word. Brown uttered it ; 
cried, " Slavery is sin ! come, all true men, help pull it 
down," and the whole machinery trembled to its very 
base. 

I value this movement for another reason. Did you 
ever see a blacksmith shoe a restless horse ? If you have, 
you have seen him take a small cord and tie the upper lip. 
Ask him what he does it for, he will tell you to give the 
beast something to think of. [Laughter.] Now, the 
South has extensive schemes. She grasps with one hand 
a Mexico, and with the other she dictates terms to the 
Church, she imposes conditions on the state, she buys up 
Webster with a little or a promise, and Everett ^vith noth- 
ing. [Great laughter and applause.] John Brown has 
given her something else to think of. He has turned her 
attention inwardly. He has taught her that there has 
been created a new element in this Northern mind ; that 
it is not merely the thinker, that it is not merely the 
editor, that it is not merely the moral reformer, but the 
idea has pervaded all classes of society. Call them mad- 
men if you will. Hard to tell who 's mad. The world 
says one man is mad. John Brown said the same of the 
Governor. You remember the madman in Edinliurgh. 
A friend asked him what he was there for. " Well,'* 
cried he, " they said at home that I was mad ; and I said 
I was not; but they had the majority." [Laughter.] 
Just so it is in regard to John Brown. The nation says 
he Is mad. I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober ; I 
appeal from the American people, drunk witli cotton, and 
the New York Observer, [loud and long laughter,] to the 
American people fifty years hence, when the light of civ- 
iHzation has had more time to penetrate, when self-interest 
has been rebuked h^ the world rising and giving its ver« 



HAEPER'S FERRY. 279 

diet on these great questions, when it is not a small band 
of Abolitionists, but the ci^dlizatlon of the twentieth cen- 
tury, in all its varied forms, interests, and elements, which 
undertakes to enter the arena, and discuss this last great 
reform. When that day comes, what will be thought of 
these first martyrs, who teach us how to live and how 
to die ? 

Has the slave a right to resist his master ? I wiU not 
argue that question to a people hoarse with shouting ever 
since July 4, 1776, that all men are created equal, that 
the right to liberty is inalienable, and that " resistance to 
tyrants is obedience to God." But may he resist to blood 
— with rifles ? What need of provuig that to a people 
who load down Bunker Hill with granite, and crowd their 
public squares with images of Washington ; ay, worship 
the sword so blindly that, leaving their oldest statesmen 
idle, they go down to the bloodiest battle-field in Mexico 
to drag out a President ? But may one help the slave 
resist, as Brown did ? Ask Byron on his death-bed in the 
marshes of Missolonghi. Ask the Hudson as its waters 
kiss your shore, what answer they bring from the grave 
of Kosciusko. I hide the Connecticut Puritan behind 
Lafayette, bleeding at Brandywine, in behalf of a nation 
his rightful king forbade him to visit. 

But John. Brown violated the law. Yes. On yonder 
desk lie the inspired words of men who died violent deaths 
for breaking the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to 
them so reverently ? Huss and Wickliffe violated laws ; 
why honor them ? George Washington, had he been 
caught before 1783, would have died on the gibbet, for 
breaking the laws of his sovereign. Yet I have heard 
that man praised within six months. Yes, you say, but 
these men broke had laws. Just so. It is honorable, then, 
to break had laws, and such law-breaking history loves 
and God blesses ! Who says, then, that slave laws are 



280 HARPER'S FERRY. 

not ten thousand times worse than any those men resisted? 
Whatever argument excuses them, makes John Brown a 
saint. 

Suppose Jolm Brown had not stayed at Harper's Ferry. 
Suppose on that momentous Monday niglit, when the 
excited imaginations of two thousand Charlestown people 
had enlarged him and his little band into four hundred 
white men and two hundred blacks, he had vanished, and 
when k^e gallant troops arrived there, two thousand strong, 
they had round nobody ! The mountains would have been 
peopled with enemies ; the Alleghanies would have heaved 
with insurrection ! You never would have convinced 
Virginia that all Pennsylvania was not armed and on the 
hills. Suppose Massachusetts, free Massachusetts, had not 
given the world the telegraph, to flash news like sunlight 
over half the globe. Then Tuesday would have rolled 
away, while slow spreading through dazed Virginia crawled 
the news of this event. Meanwhile, a hundred men having 
rallied to Brown's side, he might have marched across the 
quaking State to Richmond and pardoned Governor Wise. 
Nat Turner's success, in 1831, shows this would have been 
possible. Free thought, mother of invention, not Virginia, 
baffled Brown. But free thought, in the long run, stran- 
gles tyrants. Virginia has not slept sound since Nat 
Turner led an insurrection in 1831, and she bids fair 
never to have a nap now. [Laughter.] For this is not 
an insurrection ; this is the penetration of a different 
element. Mark you, it is not the oppressed race rising. 
Recollect history. There never was a race held in actual 
chains that vindicated its own liberty but one. There 
never was a serf nor a slave whose own sword cut off his 
own chain but one. Blue-eyed, light-haired Anglo-Saxon, 
it was not our race. We were serfs for three centuries, 
and we waited till commerce and Christianity and a differ- 
ent law had melted our fetters. We were crowded down 



HARPER'S FERRY. 281 

into a vi'^anage which crushed out our manhood so thor- 
oughly that we had not vigor Enough left to redeem 
ourselves. Neither France nor Spain, neither the North- 
ern nor the Southern races of Europe have that hright spot 
on their escutcheon, that they put an end to their own 
slavery. Blue-eyed, haughty, contemptuous Anglo-Sax- 
ons, it was the black, — the only race in the record of his- 
tory that ever, after a century of oppression, retained the 
vigor to write the charter of its emancipation with its own 
hand in the blood of the dominant race. Desjoised, calum- 
niated, slandered San Domingo is the only instance in 
history where a race, with indestructible love of liberty, 
after bearing a hundred years of oppression, rose up under 
their own leader, and Avith their own hands wrested chains 
from their own limbs. Wait, garrulous, ignorant, boast- 
ing Saxon, till you have done half as much, before you 
talk of the cowardice of the black race ! 

The slaves of our country have not risen, but, as in 
most other cases, redemption will come from the inter- 
ference of a wiser, higher, more advanced civilization on 
its exterior. It is the almost universal record of history, 
and ours is a repetition of the same drama. We have 
awakened at last the enthusiasm of both classes, — those 
that act from impulse and those that act from calculation. 
It is a libel on the Yankee to think that it includes the 
whole race, when you say that if you put a dollar on the 
other side of hell, the Yankee will spring for it at any risk 
[laughter] ; for there is an element even in the Yankee 
blood which obeys ideas ; there is an impulsive, enthusiastic 
aspiration, something left to us from the old Puritan stock ; 
that which made England what she was two centuries ago ; 
that which is fated to give the closest grapple with the 
Slave Power to-day. This is an invasion by outside 
power. Civilization in 1600 crept along our shores, now 
planting her foot, and then retreating ; now gaining a foot' 



282 H??lll»ER'S FERRY. 

hold, and then receding before barbarism, till at last came 
Jamestown and Plymoi*th, and then thh^ty States. Har- 
per's Ferry is perhaps one of Rnleigh's or Gosnold's 
colonies, vanishing and to be swept away ; by and by will 
come the immortal one hundred, and Plymouth Rock, 
with "MANiif'EST destiny" written by God's hand on 
their banner, and the right of unlimited " annexation " 
granted by Heaven itself. 

It is the lesson of the age. The first cropping out of it 
is in such a man as Jolm Brown. Grant that he did not 
measure his means ; that he was not thrifty as to his 
method ; he did not calculate closely enough, and he was 
defeated. What is defeat ? Nothing but education, — 
nothing but the first step to something better. All that is 
wanted is, that our public opinion shall not creep round 
like a servile, coward, corrupt, disordered, insane public 
opinion, and proclaim that Governor Wise, because he 
says he is a governor, is a governor; that Virginia is a 
State, because she says she is so. 

Thank God, I am not a citizen. You will remember, 
all of you, citizens of the United States, that there was not 
a Virginia gun fired at John Brown. Hundreds of well- 
armed Maryland and Virginia troops rushed to Harper's 
Ferry, and — went away ! You shot him ! Sixteen ma- 
rines, to whom you pay eight dollars a month, — your 
own representatives. When the disturbed State could not 
stand on her ow^n legs for trembling, you went there and 
strengthened the feeble knees, and held up the palsied 
hands. Sixteen men, with the vulture of the Union above 
them, [sensation,] your representatives ! It was the cov- 
enant with death and agreement with hell, which you call 
the Union of thirty States, that took the old man by the 
throat with a pirate hand ; and it will be the disgrace of 
our civilization if a gallows is ever erected in Virginia fnat 
bears his body. "The most resolute man I ever sa\»'," 



HARPER'S FERRY. 283 

says Governor Wise, " the most daring, tlie coolest. I 
would trust his truth about any question. The sincerest ! " 
Sincerity, courage, resolute daring, beating in a heart that 
feared God, and dared all to help his brother to liberty, — 
Virginia has nothing, nothing for those qualities but a 
scaffold ! [Applause.] In her broad dominion she can 
only afford him six feet for a grave ! God help the Com- 
monwealth which bids such welcome to the noblest qualities 
that can grace poor human nature ! Yet that is the acknowl- 
edgment of Governor Wise himself! I will not dignify 
such a horde with the name of a despotism ; since despot- 
ism is sometimes magnanimous. Witness Russia, covering 
Schamyl with generous protection. Compare that with 
mad Virginia, hurrying forward this ghastly trial. 

They say it cost the officers and persons in responsible 
positions more effort to keep hundreds of startled soldiers 
from shooting the five prisoners sixteen marines had made, 
than it cost those marines to take the armory itself. Sol- 
diers and civilians, — both alike, — only a mob fancying 
itself a government ! And mark you, I have said they 
were not a government. They not only are not a govern- 
ment, but they have not even the remotest idea of what a 
government is. [Laughter.] They do not begin to have 
the faintest conception of what a civilized government is. 
Here is a man arraigned before a jury, or about to be. 
The State of Virginia, as she calls herself, is about to try 
him. The first step in that trial is a jury ; the second is a 
judge ; and at the head stands the Chief Executive of the 
State, who holds the power to pardon murder ; and yet 
that very Executive, who, according to the principles of 
the sublimest chapter in Algernon Sidney's immortal book, 
is bound by the very responsibility which rests on him 
to keep his mind impartial as to the guilt of any person 
arraigned, hastens down to Richmond, hurries to the plat- 
form, and proclaims to the assembled Commonwealth of 



284 uflteR'S FERRY. 

Virginia, " The man is a murderer, and ought to be hung." 
Ahnost every lip in the State might have said it except 
that single lip of its Governor ; and tlie moment he had 
uttered these words, in tlie tlieory of the English law, it 
was not possible to impanel an impartial jury in the Com- 
monwealth of Virginia ; it was not possible to get the 
materials and the machinery to try him, according to even 
the ugliest pattern of English jurisprudence. And yet the 
Governor does not know that he has written himself down 
non compos^ and the Commonwealth that he governs sup- 
poses itself still a Christian polity. They have not the 
faintest conception of what goes to make up a government. 
The worst Jeffries that ever, in his most drunken hour, 
climbed up a lamp-post in the streets of London, would 
not have tried a man who could not stand on his feet. 
There is no such record in the blackest roll of tyranny. 
If Jeffries could speak, he would thank God that at last 
his name might be taken down from the gibbet of History, 
since the Virginia bench has made his worst act white, 
set against the blackness of this modern infamy. [Ap- 
plause.] And yet the New York press daily prints the 
accounts of the trial. Trial ! In the names of Holt and 
Somers, of Hale and Erskine, of Parsons, Marshall, and 
Jay, I protest against the name. Trial for life, in Anglo- 
Saxon dialect, has a proud, historic meaning. It includes 
indictment by impartial peers ; a copy of such indictment 
and a list of witnesses furnished the prisoner, with ample 
time to scrutinize both ; liberty to choose, and time to 
get counsel ; a sound body and a sound mind to arrange 
one's defence ; I need not add, a judge and jury impartial 
as the lot; of humanity will admit ; honored bulwarks and 
safeguards, each one the trophy and result of a century's 
struggle. Wounded, fevered, lying half unconscious on 
his pallet, unable to stand on his feet, the trial half finished 
before his first request for aid had reached his friends, — 



HARPEE'S FERRY. 285 

no list of witnesses or knowledge of them till the crier, 
calling the name of some assassin of his comrades, wakes 
him to consciousness ; the judge a tool, and the prosecutor 
seeking popularity by pandering to the mob ; no decent 
form observed, and the essence of a fair trial wholly want- 
ing, our history and law alike protest against degrading 
the honored name of Jurij Trial by lending it to such an 
outrage as this. The Inquisition used to break every 
other bone in a man's body, and then lay him on a pallet, 
giving him neither counsel nor opportunity to consult one, 
and wring from his tortured mouth something like a con- 
fession, and call it a trial. But it was heaven-robed inno- 
cence compared with the trial, or what the New York press 
call so, that has been going on in crazed and maddened 
Charlestown. 

I wish I could say anything worthy of the great deed 
which has taken place in our day, — the opening of the 
sixth seal, the pouring out of the last vial but one on a 
corrupt and giant institution. I know that many men will 
deem me a fanatic for uttering this wholesale vituperation, 
as it will be called, upon a State, and this indorsement of 
a madman. I can only say that I have spoken on this 
antislavery question before the American people thirty 
years ; that I have seen the day when this same phase of 
popular feeling — rifles and force — was on the other side. 
You remember the first time I was ever privileged to 
stand on this platform by the magnanimous generosity of 
your clergyman, when New York was about to bully and 
crush out the freedom of speech at the dictation of Cap- 
tain Rynders. From that day to this, the same braving 
of public thought has been going on from here to Kansas, 
until it bloomed in tlie events of the last three years. It 
has changed the whole face of the sentiment in these 
Northern States. You meet with the evidence of it 
everywhere. When the first news from Harper's Ferry 



286 hXIH^pj 



S FEERY. 



came to Massachusetts, if you were riding in the cars, if 
you were walking in the streets, if you met a Democrat 
or a Whig or a RepuhHcan, no matter what his politics, it 
was a singular circumstance that he did not speak of the 
guilt of Brown, of the atrocity of the deed, as you might 
have expected. The first impulsive expression, the first 
outbreak of every man's words was, " What a pity he did 
not succeed ! [Laughter.] What a fool he was for not 
going off Monday, when he had all he wanted ! How 
strange that he did not take his victory, and march away 
with it ! " It indicated the unconscious leavening of a 
sympathy with the attempt. Days followed on ; they 
commenced what they called their trial ; you met the 
same classes again ; no man said he ought to be hung ; no 
man said he was guilty ; no man predicated anything of 
his moral position ; every man voluntarily and inevitably 
seemed to give vent to his indignation at the farce of a 
trial, indicative again of that unheeded, potent, imcon- 
scious, but wide-spread sympathy on the side of Brown. 
Do you suppose that these things mean nothing ? What 
the tender and poetic youth, as Emerson says, dreams to- 
day, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to-morrow 
the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after 
is the charter of nations. The American people have 
begun to feel. The mute eloquence of the fugitive slave 
has gone up and down the highways and byways of the 
country ; it will annex itself to the great American heart 
of the North, even in the most fossil state of its hunkerism, 
as a latent sympathy with its right side. This blow, like 
the first gun at Lexington, " heard around the world," — 
this blow at Harper's Ferry reveals men. Watch those 
about you, and you will see more of the temper and un- 
conscious purpose and real moral position of men than you 
would imagine. This is the way nations are to be judged. 
Be not in a hurry ; action will come soon enough from 



HARPER'S FERRY. 287 

tills sentiment. We stereotype feeling into intellect, and 
then into statutes, and finally into national character. We 
have now the first stage of growth. Nature s live growths 
crowd out and rive dead matter. Ideas strangle statutes. 
Pulse-beats wear down granite, whether piled in jails or 
Capitols. The people's hearts are the only title-deeds, after 
all. Your Barnbui'iiers said, " Patroon titles are un- 
righteous." Judges replied, " Such is the law." Wealth 
shrieked, " Vested rights ! " Parties talked of Constitu- 
tions ; still, the people said, " Sin." They shot a sheriff. 
A parrot press cried, "Anarchy!" Lawyers growled, 
'* Murder ! " — still, nobody was hung, if I recollect 
aright. To-day, the heart of the Barnburner beats in the 
otatute-book of your State. John Brown's movement 
against slavery is exactly the same. Wait awhile, and 
you '11 all agree with me. What is fanaticism to-day is 
the fashionable creed to-morrow, and trite as the multipli- 
cation-table a week after. 

John Brown has stirred those omnipotent pulses, — 
Lydia Maria Child's is one. She says, " That dungeon 
is the place for me," and writes a letter in magnanimous 
appeal to the better nature of Governor Wise. She says 
in it : " John Brown is a hero ; he has done a noble deed. 
I think he was all right ; but he is sick ; he is wounded ; 
he wants a woman's iiursmg. I am an Abolitionist ; I 
have been so thirty years. I think slavery is a sin, and 
John Brown a saint ; but I want to come and nurse him ; 
and I pledge my word that if you will open his prison 
door, I will use the privilege, under sacred honor, only to 
nurse him. I enclose you a message to Brown ; be sure 
and deliver it." And the message was, " Old man, God 
bless you ! You have struck a noble blow ; you have 
done a mighty work ; God was with you ; your heart was 
in the right place. I send you across five hundred miles 
the pulse of a woman's gratitude." And Governor Wise 



288 HARPER'S FERRY. 

has opened the door, and announced to the world that she 
may go in. John Brown has conquered the pu'ate. [Ap- 
plause.] Hope ! tliere is hope everywhere. It is only 
the universal history : — 

"Eight forever on the scalToId, Wrong forever on tlie tlu-onc ; 
But that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 



BURIAL OF JOHN BROWN.* 



HOW feeble words seem here ! How can I hope to 
utter what your hearts are full of? I fear to dis- 
turb the harmony which his life breathes round this home. 
One and another of you, his neighbors, say, "I have 
known him five years," " I have known him ten years.'* 
It seems to me as if we had none of us known him. How 
our admiring, lo\dng wonder has grown, day by day, as he 
has unfolded trait after trait of earnest, brave, tender, 
Christian life ! We see him walking with radiant, serene 
face to the scaffold, and think what an iron heart, what 
devoted faith ! We take up his letters, beginning " My 
dear wife and children, everyone," — see him stoop on 
his way to the scaffold and kiss that negro child, — and 
this iron heart seems all tenderness. Marvellous old man ! 
We have hardly said it when the loved forms of his sons, 
in the bloom of young devotion, encircle him, and we 
remember he is not alone, only the majestic centre of a 
group. Your neighbor farmer went, surrounded by his 
household, to tell the slaves there were still hearts and 
right arms ready and nerved for their service. From this 
roof four, from a neighboring roof two, to make up that 
score of heroes. How resolute each looked into the face 
of Virginia, how loyally each stood at his forlorn post, 
meeting death cheerfully, till that master-voice said, " It is 

* Delivered at the grave of John Brown, at North Elba, December 8, 
1859. 

19 



290 BURIAlTw JOHN BROWX 

enough." And these weeping children and widow seem 
so lifted up and consecrated by long, single-hearted devo- 
tion to his great purpose, that we' dare, even at this 
moment, to remind them how blessed they are in the 
privilege of thinking that in the last throbs of those brave 
young hearts, which lie buried on the banks of the Shen- 
andoah, thoughts of them mingled with love to God and 
hope for the slave. 

He has abolished slavery in Virginia. You may say 
this is too much. Our neighbors are the last men we 
know. The hours that pass us are the ones we appreciate 
the least. Men walked Boston streets, when night' fell 
on Bunker's Hill, and pitied Warren, saying, " Foolish 
man ! Thrown away his life ! Why did n't he measure his 
means better?" Now we see him standing colossal on that 
blood-stained sod, and severing that day the tie which 
bound Boston to Great Britain. That night George III. 
ceased to rule in New England. History will date Vir- 
ginia Emancipation from Harper's Ferry. True, the slave 
is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a pine on your 
hills, it looks green for months, — a year or two. Still, it 
is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the roots 
of the slave system ; it only breathes, — it does not live, — 
hereafter. 

Men say, " How coolly brave ! " But matchless courage 
seems the least of his merits. How gentleness graced it I 
When the frightened town wished to bear off the body of 
the Mayor, a man said, " I will go, Miss Fowke, under 
their rifles, if you will stand between them and me." He 
knew he could trust their gentle respect for woman. He 
was ricrht. He went in the thick of the fio-ht and bore off 
the body in safety. That same girl flung herself between 
Virginia rifles and your brave young Thompson. They 
had no pity. The pitiless bullet reached him, spite of 
woman's prayers, though the fight had long been over. 



BURIAL OF JOHN BROWN. 291 

How God has blessed him ! How truly he may say, *' I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." 
Truly he has finished^ — done his work. God granted 
him the privilege to look on his work accomplished. He 
said, " I will show the South that twenty men can take 
possession of a town, hold it twenty-four hours, and carry 
away all the slaves who wish to escape." Did he not do 
it ? On Monday night he stood master of Harper's Ferry, 
— could have left unchecked with a score or a hundred 
slaves. The wide sympathy and secret approval are 
shown by the eager, quivering lips of lovers of slavery, 
asking, " O, why did he not take his victory and go 
away?" Who checked him at last? Not startled Vir- 
ginia. Her he had conquered. The Union crushed, — 
seemed to crush him. In reality God said, " That work 
is done ; you have proved that a Slave State is only fear in 
the mask of despotism ; come up higher, and baptize by 
your martyrdom a million hearts into holier life." Surely 
such a life is no failure. How vast the change in men's 
hearts ! Insurrection was a harsh, horrid word to millions 
a month ago. John Brown went a whole generation be- 
yond it, claiming the right for white men to help the slave 
to fi'eedom by arms. And now men run up and down, 
not disputing his principle, but trying to frame excuses 
for Virginia's hanging of so pure, honest, high-hearted, and 
heroic a man. Virginia stands at the bar of the civilized 
world on trial. Round her victim crowd the apostles and 
martyrs, all the brave, high souls who have said, " God is 
God," and trodden wicked laws under their feet. As I 
stood looking at his grandfather's gravestone, brought here 
from Connecticut, telling, as it does, of his death in the 
Revolution, I thought I could hear our hero-saint saying, 
" My fathers gave their swords to the oppressor, — the 
slave still sinks before the pledged force of this nation. I 
give my sword to the slave my fathers forgot." If any 



292 BURIAI^M' JOHN BROWN. 

swords ever reflected the smile of Heaven, surely it wa3 
those drawn at Harper's Ferry. If our God is ever the 
Lord of Hosts, making one man chase a thousand, surely 
that little band might claim him for their captain. Har- 
per's Ferry was no single hour, standing alone, — taken 
out from a common life, — it was the flowering out of fifty 
years of single-hearted devotion. He must have lived 
wholly for one great idea, when these who owe their being 
to him, and these whom love has joined to the circle, 
group so harmoniously around him, each accepting serenely 
his and her part. 

I feel honored to stand under such a roof. Hereafter 
you will tell children standing at your knees, " I saw John 
Brown buried, — I sat under his roof" Thank God for 
such a master. Could we have asked a nobler representa- 
tive of the Christian North putting her foot on the ac- 
cursed system of slavery? As time passes, and these 
hours float back into history, men will see against the clear 
December sky that gallows, and round it thousands of 
armed men guarding Virginia from her slaves. On the 
other side, the serene brow of that calm old man, as he 
stoops to kiss the child of a forlorn race. Thank God for 
our emblem. May he soon bring Vii'ginia to blot out hers 
in repentant shame, and cover that hateful gallows and 
soldiery with thousands of broken fetters. 

What lesson shall those lips teach us? Before that still, 
calm brow let us take a new baptism. How can we stand 
here without a fresh and utter consecration ? These tears ! 
how shall we dare even to offer consolation ? Only lips 
fresh from such a vow have the riMit to mingle their 
words with your tears. We en^^y you your nearer place 
to these martyred children of God. I do not beheve slav- 
ery will go down in blood. Ours is the age of thought. 
Hearts are stronger than swords. That last fortnight ! 
How sublime its lesson ! the Christian one of conscience, 



BUEIAL OF JOHN BROWN. 29B 

— of truth. Virginia is weak, because each man's heart 
said amen to John Brown. His words, — they are stronger 
even than his rifles. These crushed a State. Those have 
changed the thoughts of miUions, and will yet crush slav- 
ery. Men said, " Would he had died in arms ! " God 
ordered better, and granted to Mm and the slave those 
noble prison hours, — that single hour of death ; granted 
him a higher than the soldier's place, that of teacher ; the 
echoes of his rifles have died away in the hills, — a million 
hearts guard his words. God bless this roof, — make it 
bless us. We dare not say bless you, children of this 
home ! you stand nearer to one whose lips God touched, 
and we rather bend for your blessing. God make us all 
worthier of him whose dust we lay among these hills he 
loved. Here he girded himself and went forth to battle. 
Fuller success than his heart ever dreamed God granted 
him. He sleeps in the blessings of the crushed and the 
poor, and men believe more flrmly in virtue, now that 
such a man has lived. Standing here, let us ^^^^nk God 
for a firmer faith and fuller hope. 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION.* 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: If the telegrapn 
speaks truth, for the first time in our history the 
dave has chosen a President of the United States. 
[Cheers.] We have passed the Rubicon, for Mr. Lin- 
coln rules to-day as much as he ^vill after the 4th of 
March. It is the moral effect of this victory, not any- 
thing which his administration can or will probably do, 
that gives value to this success. Not an Abolitionist, 
hardly an antislavery man, Mr. Lincoln consents to rep- 
resent an antislavery idea. A pawn on the political 
chessboard, his value is in his position ; with fair effort, 
we may soon change him for knight, bishop, or queen, 
and sweep the board. [Applause.] This position he 
owes to no merit of his own, but to lives that have roused 
the nation's conscience, and deeds that have ploughed 
deep into its heart. Our childish eyes gazed with wonder 
at Maelzel's chess-player, and the pulse almost stopped 
when, with the pulling of wires and creaking of wheels, 
he moved a pawn, and said, " Check ! " Our wiser fathers 
saw a man in tlie box. There was great noise at Chicago, 
much pulling of wires and creaking of wheels, then forth 
steps Abraham Lincoln. But John Brown was behind 
the curtain, and the cannon of March 4th will only echo 
the rifles at Harper's Feriy. Last year, we stood looking 

* Fraternity Lecture, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, November 
7, 1860. 



LINCOLN'S LLECTION. 295 

sadly at that gibbet against the Virginia skj. One turn 
of the kaleidoscope, — it is Lincoln in the balcony of the 
Cap'tol, and a million of hearts beating welcome below. 
[Cheers.] 

Mr. Seward said, in 1850 : " You may slay the Wilmot 
Proviso in the Senate-Chamber, and bury it beneath the 
Capitol, to-day ; the dead corse, in complete steel, will 
haunt your legislative halls to-morrow." They slew the 
martyr-chief on the banks of the Potomac ; we buried his 
dust beneath the snows of North Elba ; and the statesman 
Senator of New York wrote for his epitaph, " Justly hung," 
while party chiefs cried, " Amen ! " but one of those dead 
hands smote to ruin the Babylon which that Senator's am 
bition had builded, and the other lifts into tb3 Capitol the 
President of 1861. [Applause.] 

The battle has been a curious one, mixed and tossed in 
endless confusion. The combatants, in the chaos, caught 
up often the weapons of their opponents, and dealt the 
deadliest blows at their own ranks. 

The Democratic party, agitating fiercely to put down 
agitation, break at last into a general quarrel in their effort 
to keep the peace ! [Laughter.] They remind one of 
that sleepy crier of a New Hampshire court, who was ever 
dreaming, in his dog-naps, that the voice of judge or law- 
yer was a noisy interruption, and always woke shouting, 
"Silence!" Judge Livermore said once, "Mr. Crier, you 
are the noisiest man in court, with your everlasting shout 
of ' Silence ' ! " [Laughter.] The Abolitionists ought to 
be very sorry to lose Mr. Douglas from the national arena. 
[Applause.] 

But the Bell-Everett party have been the comfort of 
the canvass, the sweet-oil, the safety-valve, the locomotive 
buffer, which, when collision threatened, broke the blow, 
and the storm exploded in a laugh. [Great merriment.] 
They played Sancho Panza to Douglas's Don Quixote. 



296 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

[Renewed laughter.] We can afford to thank t!n;ni. It 
is but fan', however, to confess that they differ from that 
illustrious Spaniard. His chief anxiety was about his din- 
ner ; their distress rose higher than loaves and fishes, — 
they trembled for our glorious Union. [Laughter.] The 
passions of men were all on fire, — the volcano in full 
activity. They confessed they did not know what to do ; 
but they determined not to do they knew not what. Theirs 
was the stand-Hill policy, the cautious statu quo of the old 
law. 

Now, Whately says there are two ways of being burned. 
The rash moth hurries into the flame, and is gone. The 
cautious, conservative horse, when his stable is on fire, 
stands stock-still, and is burnt up all the same. The 
Everett party chose the horse policy when their stable 
took fire. [Applause.] Don't you hear the horse's ad- 
dress ; " In this stall my father stood in 1789. Methinks 
I hear his farewell neigh. How agitated the crowds seem 
outside there ! I '11 have no platform but that my father 
had in '89," — and so he dies. Yet the noble animal risked 
only his own harm. His mistakes drag none else to ruin. 
Four millions of human beings saw their fate hanging on 
this do-nothing, keep-silent, let-evil-alone party. Then 
their appeals to us to keep silent, to cease criticising chains 
and slave-auctions, hangings and burnings of men for free 
speech ; their kindly assurances that, if we would only be 
still, no harm would come, — the whole trouble was our 
noise ; they implored us not to cherish this dislike to these 
constitutional and necessary measures ! Like the viper- 
pedler in Spain, who exhibited his stock to the inn guests 
all the evening, descanting on their life and vigor, and 
when at night, in the utter dark, one traveller felt some- 
thing cold crawling on his face, cried out : " It is only my 
vipers, they are all loose ; but if you '11 only lie perfectly 
still and quiet, they won't hurt you the least." [Ap- 
plause.] 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 297 

But Republicanism has triumphed. [Loud applause.] 
The Democrat may forget his quarrels, and prepare to die 
with decency. For the Bell-Everett party, one egg has 
given a chicken. Mr. Appleton is elected. Beacon Street 
and Ann Street have fused. [Merriment.] As his con- 
stituents could not be admitted to Mr. Appleton's house, 
— there not being police enough to watch them, [great 
merriment,] — the speeches were made outside, and we ' 
got all the secrets. Mr. Stevenson thinks the election of 
Mr. Appleton " the most important that has taken place 
since the adoption of the Constitution." I observed, last 
summer, in the country, that the geese always bowed 
when they entered a barn, for fear of hitting their heads. 
[Laughter.] Mr. Burlingame needs no praise of mine. 
He stood, like Hancock and Adams, the representative of 
an idea, and the city that rejected him disgraced only her- 
self [Applause.] As an old English judge said of a 
sentence he blushed to declare, "In this I seem to pro- 
nounce sentence not on the prisoner, but on the law itself." 
It is Boston, not Burlingame, that has cause to blush to- 
day. [Cheers.] I do not envy Mr. Appleton his seat. 
You remember Webster painted Washington leaning one 
great arm on Massachusetts, and the other on South 
Carolina. Methinks I see our merchant prince entering 
Congress. One hand rests familiarly on the shoulder of 
Beacon Street, the other on a cambric handkerchief, twice 
doubled, to save the possibility of his touching the shoulder 
of Ann Street. [Laughter and applause.] What is his 
first act when seated, — he, the representative of the fag- 
ends of half a dozen parties, — the broken meat of the 
political charity-basket ? He speak the voice of Boston, 
the home of Sam Adams, in this glorious hour ! What 
will it be ? When Sherman is named for Speaker, he 
says "No," while the heart of Boston says " Yes." And 
what is his second and last act? To gather round his 



298 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. ^ 

table Davis and Mason, — men who gloried in the blow 
which exiled Sumner from the Senate, for four years, and 
made Christendom tremble for his life, — men who come 
for his wine, and not for his wit, — and Boston, in his 
person, sinks to be their associate, — no, their lackey. I 
affirm, he does not represent Boston. [Cheers.] Look 
at its Lincoln vote ! I appeal from Philip drunk to 
Philip sober, from Ann Street, cozened by old fogies, 
to Ann Street under guidance of her native instincts. 
[Loud applause.] Mr. Appleton represents neither the 
merchants of Boston nor its grog-shops, though his friends 
boast of having carried him by their aid. They are both 
too good for him. 

But the Bell-Everett party cannot say, with Francis I. 
at Pavia, when he addressed the first lady by position in the 
State, "Madam, we have lost all but honor," since the sore- 
ness of expected defeat led them to insult an invited guest, 
a lady, and that lady, like the mother of Francis, the first 
by position in the State. [Loud applause.] Of the first 
Governor of Massachusetts (unless we count Endicott, 
and then call Winthrop our second Governor), the last 
historian writes : " The qualities that denote the gentle- 
man were eminently his. Cordial and ready to every 
expression of respect and courtes}^, he gave all their 
due, whether in great or little things." Good and bad 
qualities, they tell us, are inherited, — pass down with the 
blood. To be sure, now and then they lie latent for one 
generation. Can ours be the generation of eclipse ? It 
must be so, for surely the ignorance of good manners 
which offers an insult is trivial, compared with the silence 
of those who know better than their lackeys, are as re- 
sponsible for the act, and refuse acknowledgment or pro- 
test. [Applause.] 

Well, the battle is ended. What have we gained ? 
Let us, Ladies and Gentlemen, who care nothing for men 



.LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 299 

or for offices, whose onlj- interest is justice and the areat 
futoe of the Republic, look round and weigh the spoif 

Everybody speculates, the pulpit affirms, the merchant 
guesses, and the oracular press lays down the law. Why 
should not the lyceum be in the fashion ? To beo-in then 
at home. For the first time within my memory we have 
got a man for Governor of Massachusetts, a fink true 

whole-souled, honest MAN. rCheerin,. 1 Tb.t ^ ^ 
is w<^,-fl> „ii *i 1. T. L^'ieeimg.j iliat gam alone 

IS woith all the labor. But the office is not the most im 
portant m the Commonwealth; only now and t e„" 

when Mr. Washburn was masquerading as Governor 
and when as Emerson said, "if we had a maraud 
not a cockade, m the chair, something might be done " ; Tr 
later, when the present Chief Magistrate pushed J^dge' 

the cJi f 7, t l' ^"r™"" ^"' '" — «" times, 
the CI ef Justiceship ,s far more commanding, _ is the 
real Gibraltar of our State contests. John A Andrew 
should have been Chief Justice. [Applause.] You reT 
member they made the first William Pitt Earl of Chatham 
and he went into eclipse in the House of Lords. Sole' 
one asked Chesterfield what had become of Pitt. "He 
has had a fall up-stairs," was the answer. Governor 
Andrew or Judge Andrew sounds equally well. Bu 
I like the right man in the right place. The chief jus- 

rnlt t""^ '" '" P^'-*^ "' P^°g-- Their Sparta 
can point to many sons worthy of the place, - Sewall 
Hoar, Dana or we might have offered anothe; l.nrjt 

at the" f'" ^T ^'"'*°''' ''"•^ ■' ""'y '0 ^1-w him 
t at he profession he once honored still remembers her 

truant son [Great applause.] The outgoing administra- 

bTe' :ha:Vf ^"1 'T "'"'^^ "" *^'''"*^' ^-«-r -specl 
able that belong to the party of resistance, placed itself 
by the side of Arnold selling West Point to the British 



800 lincolR'S election. 

Such an appointment was the Parthian arrow of a traitor 
and a snob. 

Then we have Lincohi for President [applause] , — a 
Whig, — a Revohitionary Whig, — a fi-eedom-loving Whig, 
— a Whig in the sense that Jefferson, Hamihon, and 
Washington were Whigs. How much is that worth ? I 
said we had passed the Rubicon. Cassar crossed the Rubi- 
con, borne in the arms of a people trodden into poverty 
and chains by an oligarchy of slaveholders ; but that oli- 
garchy proved too strong even for Caesar and his legions. 
Judged by its immediate success, Caesar's hfe was a failure 
as much as John Brown's ; the Empire rotted into the 
grave which slavery digs for all its victims. What better 
right have we to hope ? Let us examine. The Repub- 
lican party says now what Mr. Sumner said in 1852, that 
it "knows no better aim, under the Constitution, than to 
bring back the government " to where it stood in 1789. 
That is done. The echo of cannon from ocean shore to 
the Rocky Mountains proclaims it accomplished. 

How much is such success worth ? I suppose you will 
not claim that Mr. Lincoln is better than Washington. 
As only Abolition telescopes have dared to discover any 
spots on that sun, certainly, while Mr. Everett lives and 
the Ledger is printed, no one will presume to say there 
can be a better President than Washington. Indeed, Mr, 
Seward asks in great contempt of any man who undertakes 
to improve the Constitution, "Are you more just than 
Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more humane than 
Jefferson ? " Well, then, Washington, pursuing the very 
policy which Mr. Lincoln proposes to follow, launched the 
ship of state on seas white with the fervor of the Revolu- 
tionary love of liberty, and made shipwreck. Every ad- 
ministration grew worse than its predecessor, and at last 
slavery, having wound its slimy way to the top of the 

Capitol, 

« Hangs hissing at the nobler man below.'* 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 801 

The whole argument of the canvass has been, that the 
experiment of self-government under this Constitution, 
began by the best of men, has been a failure. " The 
country is wrecked ; take us for pilots, or you are lost,'' — ^^ 
has been the cry of the Republicans. Mr. Sumner has 
drawn the sad picture so well and so often that I need not 
attempt it. Our Presidents tools of the Slave Power, 
our army used to force slavery on our own Territories 
and neighbor-nations, free speech punished with death in 
one half the Union, and met with insult and starvation in 
the other, the slave-trade reopened, and our most dis- 
tinguished scholar telegraphing apologies when his son sits 
at school beside a colored boy, and explaining his own 
indiscreet freedom of speech as the sad result of anodynes. 
[Applause.] Surely Mr. Seward, seeing all this, was 
right in confessing, at Rochester, in 1858, " Thus far our 
course has not been according to the humane hopes and 
expectations of our fathers." And, in 1860, " Not over 
the face of the whole world is there to be found one repre- 
sentative of our country who is not an apologist of the 
extension of slavery." And again, in Kansas, a month 
ago, " Our fathers thought slavery would cease before 
now ; but the people became demoralized ; the war went 
back, hack^ back, until 1854, until all guaranties of free- 
dom in every part of the United States were abandoned, 

and the flag of the United States was made the 

harbinger, not of freedom, but of human bondage." 

At Rochester, he went on to paint the picture of our 
national wreck so darkly, that his own feelings led him, in 
conclusion, to declare, that, if the final battle goes against 
him, he will leave America, shake the dust off his feet, and 
find " a more congenial home ; for where Liberty dwells, 
there is my country." 

But Mr. Seward closes that speech in hope, — hope 
grounded on this, that the Republican party has arisen. 



302 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

" It is a party of one idea ; an idea that fills and expands 
all generous souls ; the idea of equalitj-, — the equality of 
all men before human tribunals, as they are all equal be- 
fore the Divine tribunal and laws." 

That is his rainbow of hope. It is a noble idea, — 
equality before the law, — a mark which an old Greek 
declared, two thousand years ago, distinguished freedom 
from barbarism. Mark it, and let us question Mr. Lin- 
coln about it. 

Do you believe, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, that the negro 
is your pohtical and social equal, or ought to be ? Not a 
bit of it. 

Do you believe he should sit on juries ? Never. 

Do you think he should vote ? Certainly not. 

Should he be considered a citizen ? I tell you frankly, 
no. 

Do you think that, when the Declaration of Independ- 
ence says, " All men are created equal," it intends the 
political equality of blacks and whites ? No, sir. 

If this " idea that fills all generous minds" be equality, 
surely Mr. Lincoln's mind is as yet empty. If this is the 
only hope of our being able to achieve what our fathers 
failed to do, mount those Arab horses, Mr. Seward, and 
fly to the desert ! But you can't fly with me, as the song 
goes ; first, because, if we are defeated, I mean to die in 
the last ditch [applause] ; and, secondly, notwithstanding 
the emptiness of Mr. Lincoln's mind, I think we shall yet 
succeed in making this a decent land to live in. [Cheers.] 
May I tell you why ? Place yourselves at the door of 
the Chicago Convention. Do you see Mr. Lincoln ? He 
believes a negro may walk where he wishes, eat what he 
earns, read what he can, and associate with any other who 
is exactly of the same shade of black he is. That is all he 
can grant. Well, on the other side is Mr. Seward. He 
believes the free negro should sit on juries, vote, be eligi- 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 803 

ble to office, — that 's all. So much he thinks he can 
grant without hurting the Union. 

Now raise your eyes up ! In the blue sky above, you 
will see Mr. Garrison and John Brown ! [Prolonged 
cheering.] They believe the negro, bond or free, has the 
same right to fight that a white man has, — the same claim 
on us to fight for him ; and as for the consequences to the 
Union, who cares? Liberty first, and the Union after- 
wards, is their motto. [Cheers.] Liberty first, and, as 
the Scotch say, " Let them care who come ahind." 

That Convention selected Lincoln for their standard- 
bearer. Enough gain for once. " First the blade, then 
the ear, then the full corn in the ear." [Loud cheers.] 
Dr. Windship began with a dumb-bell of ten pounds ; after 
four years, he raises tw^o hundred and fifty pounds in each 
hand. The elephants, when crossing a river, send the 
smallest first. Don't mount those Arab steeds yet, Mr. 
Seward! "Wait a little longer." Who knows whether 
that Liberator, whose printing-office Mayor Otis could not 
find in 1835, may not be issued from the eastern room 
of the White House in 1873, and Mr. Seward himself, 
instead of saying that John Brown was ''justly hung," 
may dare then to declaim, as Charles O'Connor does now, 
in the Supreme Court at Albany: — 

" A man who knows that the law under which he lives violates 

the first principles of natural justice is bound to strive, by 

all honorable means, to break down and defeat that law. Among 
these honorable means is the right of armed resistance, — the 

sacred right of revolution This is the higher law wliich 

sanctified the revolt of George Washington against the consti- 
tuted authorities then existing in this country The laurel- 
wreath of victory surrounds the name of Washington. Ill-suc- 
cess, defeat, overthrow, and death, in an ignominious form, might 
have been his fate. Such was the fate of many who, in this re- 
spect, perhaps, were as pure and virtuous as he. We revere the 



304 linSHln'S election. 

name of Emmett; we revere the name of Wallace, of 

every virtuous man who has perished in unsuccessful attempts to 
achieve the independence of his country. 

" And therefore, if negro slavery be a thing so unjust and so 
wicked as my friends and their associates esteem it, I must admit 
that we cannot consistently refuse the same tribute to the recent 
abolition martyr, John Brown. He fell ! So have many illus- 
trious champions of justice. He failed ! So did Emmett, and 
so did Wallace. His means were inadequate ! So were theirs : 
the event proved it. He struggled indeed for the liberty of a 
distant people, who were not his kinsmen, who were not of Ids 
color, who had few claims upon his sympathy, and none upon liig 
affections. That may be an argument against him with those 
who think that heroism and virtue should never be disinterested ; 
but it has no real weight. 

" We have not been in the habit of withholding our meed of 
praise from Kosciusko, Pulaski, De Kalb, or Lafliyette, all of 
whom fought, and two of whom perislied for us. We withheld 
not our tribute of admiration from Lafayette when, in his old 
age, he visited our country. No one asserted that he should 
have stayed at home, instead of coming in aid of a remote and 
distant people, and imperilling his life for their emancipation. 
No! we received him as the people's guest, and the whole 
American nation, from one end of our republic to the other, 
bowed down in heartfelt homage to his virtue. 

" How can my learned friends, with their avowed principles, 
withhold from John Brown the tribute of their admiration, or 
from his deeds the sanction of their approval ? " 

That is the opinion of Charles O'Connor, the head of 
the New York Bar, the new-fledged orator of Democracy, 
and the counsel for Virginia in the Lemmon case. 

I expect to live to hear that sentence quoted in 1872, 
under the very dome of the Capitol, by some Senator 
anxious for a Presidential nomination ! [Applause.] Do 
you doubt it? Why^ it is not impossible that Virginia 
herself, clothed and in her right mind, may yet beg of 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 805 

New York the dust of John Brown for some mausoleum 
at Richmond, as repentant Florence, robed in sackcloth, 
begged of Ravenna the dust of that outlawed Dante, whom 
a century before she ordered to be burned alive. [Great 
cheering.] You think me a fanatic, perhaps ? Well, I 
have been thought so once or twice before. [Laughter.] 
May I tell you the reason of the faith that is in me ? It 
does not hang on President Lincoln or any other Presi- 
dent. Certainly not while he is checkmated by both 
House and Senate. I think little of the direct hifluence 
of gOA^ernments. I think, with Guizot, that " it is a gross 
delusion to believe in the sovereign power of political ma- 
chinery." To hear some men talk of the government, 
you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravita- 
tion, and kept the planets in their places. Mr. Webster 
sneered at the antislavery and kindred movements as 
" rub-a-dub agitations." Judge Story plumes himself on 
our government abolishing the slave-trade in 1808, as if 
in that it was not the servant of Clarkson and Wilberforce, 
Benezet and Woohnan ! 

I never take up a paper full of Congress squabbles, 
reported as if sunrise depended upon them, without think- 
ing of that idle English nobleman at Florence, whose 
brother, just arrived from London, happening to mention 
the House of Commons, he languidly asked, " Ah ! is that 
thing going still ? " [Great merriment.] Did you ever see 
on Broadway — you may in Naples — a black figure grind- 
ing chocolate in the windows ? He seems to turn the 
wheel, but in truth the wheel turns him. [Laughter.] 
Now such is the President of the United States. He seems 
to govern ; he only reigns. As Lord Brougham said in a 
similar case, — Lincoln is in place^ Garrison in power. 
[Applause.] " Rub-a-dub agitation," forsooth ! as if Mr. 
Webster could have a Whig party, or anything else, in 
these reading days, without that agitation which calls into 

20 



806 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

being and sustains the press, which melts and moulds the 
popular will and heart. What wguld the Tribune be 
without the antislavery movement ? Let progressive men 
be mum, and the Tribune would starve. We could better 
do without it, than it without us. This talk of politicians 
about quieting agitation, and yet expecting progress, or 
even life, is like the present Shah of Persia, (not one of 
whose subjects in fifty thousand can read, and not one in 
a hundred thousand can write,) exclaiming, when Sir 
Gore Ousely told him of the large revenue from the 
British post-office, " I '11 have a post-office to-morrow." 
[Loud applause.] You might as well have jury trials in 
Timbuctoo. [Laughter.] It is worse than making bricks 
without straw ; it is making bricks without clay. 

Observe, I do not depreciate statesmanship. It requires 
great ability to found states and governments, but only 
common talent to carry them on. It took Fulton and 
Watt to create the steam-engine ; but a very ordinary 
man can engineer a train from Boston to Albany. 

Some critics sneer at old histories for recording only 
what government did. They should remember how 
much, in old times, governments covered the whole field 
of human life, — trade, letters, religion, and industry. 
The annals of a dynasty were then, to a great extent, the 
history of the times. We call for different histories, be- 
cause the times have so much changed. At present, it is 
not cabinets, but art, science, literature, opinion, fashion, 
and trade that mould national character and purpose. 
These, the London Times confessed, a dozen years ago, 
were infinitely more than statutes or parties. The late 
canvass was worth a dozen Lincolns. The agitation was 
a yeomanly service to liberty. It educated the people. 
One such canvass makes amends for the cowardice of our 
scholars, and consoles us under the infliction of Harvard 
College. [Lauo;hter and applause.] Indeed, government 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 307 

is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. 
Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. 
All governing over-much kills the self-help and energy of 
the governed. Compare the last century with this, or the 
European with the Yankee. Every narrowing of the 
sphere of government proves growth in the people, and is 
the seed of further growth. 

Civilization dwarfs political machinery. Without doubt, 
the age of Fox and Pitt was one in which the prejudices 
of courts and the machinery of cabinets had large sway. 
But how absurd to say even of Pitt and Fox that they 
shaped the fate of England. The inventions of Watt and 
Arkwright set free millions of men for the ranks of Wel- 
hngton ; the wealth they created clothed and fed those 
hosts ; the trade they established necessitated the war, if 
it was at all or ever necessary. Berlin and Milan decrees 
would have smothered every man in England. The very 
goods they manufactured, shut out from the continent, 
would have crowded the inhabitants oflP their little island. 
It was land monopoly that declared war with France, and 
trade fought the battle. Napoleon was struck down by 
no eloquence of the House of Commons, by no sword of 
WelHngton. He was crushed and ground to powder in 
the steam-engines of James Watt. 

Cobden and O'Connell, out of the House of Commons, 
were giants ; in it, dwarfs. Sir Robert Peel, the cotton- 
spinner, was as much a power as Sir Robert Peel, the 
Prime Minister. We went to stare at the Lord Chancel- 
lor, not for his seals and velvet bag, but because he was 
Harry Brougham of the Edinburgh Review. Rowland 
Hill and Adam Smith, Granville Sharpe and Pilgrim's 
Progress, the London Times and the Stock Exchange, 
outweigh a century of Cannings and Palmerstons, Glad- 
stones, Liverpools, and Earls Grey. 

Weighed against the New England Primer, Lyman 



308 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

Beeclier, and Franklin, against the New York Tribune 
and Herald, all our thirteen Presidents kick the beam. 
The pulpit and the steamboat are of infinitely more mo- 
ment than the Constitution. The South owes the exist- 
ence of slavery to-day to the cunning of a Massachusetts 
Yankee, Eli Whitney ; and Fulton did more to perpetuate 
the Union than a Senate-Chamber of Websters. I will 
not say that Mr. Banks, at the head of the Illinois Railway 
(if he ever gets there), will be a more influential man than 
while Governor of this State, but I will say that the found- 
ers and presidents of our railways are a much more 
influential body than the Senate of the Union. 

Still, though I think little of political machinery, I value 
the success of the Republican party ; not so much as an 
instrument, but as a milestone. It shows how far we have 
got. Let me explain. [Laughter.] You know that 
geologists tell us that away back there, before Moses 
[laughter], the earth hung a lurid mass of granite, hot, 
floating in thick carbonic acid gas for an atmosphere,—- 
poison, thick gas. Gradually the granite and choke- 
damp, as miners call it, united and made limestone ; then 
more choke-damp was absorbed, and sandstone came ; 
more still, and coal appeared. By this time, the air had 
parted with all its poison, and was pure enough to breathe. 
Then came man ! Just such has been our progress. Our 
government hung a lurid, floating mass in the poisonous 
atmosphere of New York Observers and Heralds, Tract 
Societies, pro-slavery pulpits. Union meetings, Calhouns, 
Everetts, Websters, and Halletts, slave-hunters, Curtises. 
The chemical process began. They were partially ab- 
sorbed. We had Whig parties, anti-Texas meetings, and 
Free-soil factions. The change went on, and finally we 
have a party that dares to say slavery is a sin — in some 
places ! The air begins to grow almost pure enough to 
breathe. [Applause.] 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 309 

Scientific men think that electricity did much to hasten 
the coming of limestone and coal, and the disappearance 
of poison gas. In our case, too, electricity, — by which I 
mean the Garrison party [loud laughter and applause], — 
flashing through and through and all over the lazy heav- 
ens, quickened our change also. But the growth will be 
a great deal quicker in time to come. [Loud applause.] 
One great evil of politics — one that almost outweighs 
the help it indirectly gives to education — is the chains it 
puts on able men. Those chains are much loosened now. 
Listen to Mr. Seward on the prairies ! Notice how free 
and eloquent he has been since the Chicago Convention ! 
And this change is not due to age. You know, I am apt 
to say, among other impertinent things, that you can 
always get the truth from an American statesman after he 
has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presi- 
dency. [Applause.] I should like a law that one third 
of our able men should be inelimble to that office : then 
every third man would tell us the truth. The last ten 
years of John Quincy Adams were the frankest of his life. 
In them, he poured out before the people the treason and 
indignation which formerly he had only written in his 
diary. And Josiah Quincy, the venerable, God bless 
him ! has told us more truth since he was eighty, than he 
ever did before. [Applause.] They tell us that until 
this year they have not been able to survey Mount Wash- 
ington ; its iron centre warped the compass. Just so with 
our statesmen before they reach seventy, their survey of 
the state is ever false. That great central magnet at 
Washington deranges all their instruments. 

Let me take the speeches of Mr. Seward as an illustra- 
tion of American statesmen. I take him, because he is a 
live man, and a worthy sample. [Applause.] I agree 
with the doctors' rule, — Medicamenta non agunt in cadaver^ 
— " Dead bodies are no test of drugs." But he is a lair 



310 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

test, — a real live statesman ; not one of those petty poli- 
ticians who hang on agitation for wl^t they can pick up, as 
I have seen birds, in summer, watch round a horse's feet 
for the insects his tread disturbs. No, he is a statesman. 

In 1848, at Cleveland, Mr. Seward said : " We of New 
York are guilty of slavery still by withholding the right 
of suffrage from the race we have emancipated. You of 
Ohio are guilty in the same way by a system of black laws 

still more aristocratic and odious It is written in 

the Constitution of the United States, in violation of the 
Divine law, that we shall surrender the fugitive slave 
who takes refuge at our fireside from his relentless pur- 
suers." 

Mark the confession ! the Constitution he stands sworn 
to support violates the Divine law ! Does he advise his 
hearers to obey it ? O no ! He goes on : " Extend a 
cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays his weary limbs 
at your door, and defend him as you would your paternal 
gods." This is one of his methods of " an effective ag- 
gression on slavery." That sounds well. No twaddle 
about non-extension. No wonder Senator Mason sum- 
moned such ' a bloody fanatic before the Hai'per's Ferry 
Committee ! 

Well, in the Senate, in 1850, he declares that " the law 
of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of free- 
men, repudiates the fugitive slave clause"; that "we 
cannot be either true Christians or true freemen, if we 
impose on another a chain that we defy all human power 
to fasten on ourselves " ; and he " thinks it wrong to hold 
men in bondage, at any time, and under any circum- 
stances." But yet, at the same time, having counselled 
Ohio to resist the slave clause, and denounced it as a " com- 
pact no Christian nation would ever make," he goes on to 
pledge himself to use only " constitutional and peaceful 
means " to resist slavery, all about the paternal gods to 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 311 

the contrary notwithstanding ! You need not summon 
him, Mr. Mason ! He won't do any harm ! In 1860, 
just after Harper's Ferry, he tells the South, that, if their 
sovereignty is assailed, within or without, no matter on 
what pretext, or who the foe, he will defend it as he would 
his own ! You see, peaceful measures against slavery ; 
guns and bayonets /br it ! 

Do these words mean that ? O no ! Go with me to 
Madison, in September, and stand before that beautiful 
Capitol between the three lakes, and you will hear these 
same lips saying : — 

" It has been by a simple rule of interpretation I have studied 
the Constitution of my country. That rule has been simply this : 
that by no word, no act, no combination into which I might 
enter, should any one human being of all the generations to 
which I belong, much less any class of human beings of any 
nation, race, or kindred, be oppressed and kept doAvn in the least 
degi-ee in their efforts to rise to a higher state of liberty and hap- 
piness. Amid all the glosses of the times, amid all the essays 
and discussions to which the Constitution of the United States 
has been subjected, this has been the simple, plain, broad light in 
which I have read every article and every section of that great 
instrument. Whenever it requires of me that this hand shall 
keep down the humblest of the human race, then I will lay down 
power, place, position, fame, everything, rather than adopt such a 
construction or such a rule. If, therefore, in this land there are 
any who would rise, I say to them, in God's name, good speed ! 
If there are in foreign lands people wdio would improve their 
condition by emigration, or if there be any here who would go 
abroad in search of happiiiess, in the improvement of their con- 
dition, or in their elevation toward a higher state of dignity and 
happiness, they have always had, and they always shall have, a 
cheering word, and such efforts as I can consistently make in 
their behalf." [Cheers.] 

That is good ! It sounds like Kossuth ! Now, then, 
we understand him fully. He will never help a slave- 



312 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

holder, and believe all races equal. Not quite. Is lie in 
favor of complete equality, social and all ? Is tlie coun- 
try as open to the black man as the white ? O no ! 
In February last, he declared that the man who said so 
libelled the Republican party ! And at St. Paul, in Sep- 
tember, he bade them remember tHis was the country of 
the white man ! and lets them understand that the Re- 
publican party opposes only the extension of slavery. In 
1850, he declared " this violation of the Divine law," 
which he calls " the Constitution," — this " compact 
which no Christian state would ever make," and no 
Christian man could ever obey, — "the only just and 
equal government that ever existed ! no other govern- 
ment ever could be so wise, just, free, and equal ! " And 
he affirms that no time or change could ever pi'oduce one 
more beneficent ! Last Friday, in New York, he said 
that whoever doubts that this Constitution (" this viola- 
tion of the Divine law ") will " last forever, has no faith 
in reason, no faith in justice, no faith in truth, no faith 
in virtue" ! If this be so, then '-'-violations of the Divine 
law" seem about as eternal as the Divine law itself; and 
the Italian who prayed, " Good Lord, good Devil," was 
a sensible man, and was only laying a very prudent and 
necessary anchor to the windward ! [Laughter and 
applause.] 

At Washington, in February, he thought John Brown 
"was misguided and desperate," and "justly hung." He 
talks of " social horrors " and " disunion," and irons his 
face out to portentous length and sadness. [Laughter.] 
But at Chicago, in September, John Brown, he says, 
" was the only one man [when the Missouri Compromise 
was repealed] who hoped against the prevailing demor- 
alization, and cheered and sustained me [Mr. Seward] 
through it ! " And at St. Paul, he snaps his fingers at 
disunion, and, amid shouts of derisive laughter, cries out, 
"Who's afraid?" 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 313 

Tliey exhibited at the Crystal Palace, m 1851, a Da- 
mascus blade, so flexible that it could be placed in a sheath, 
coiled like a snake. Something like it seems Mr. Seward's 
conscience, only the blade boasted it could hend. Seward, 
after coihng in and out, insists on our believing that he 
never bent a whit ! 

But hear him now, since the nomination at Chicago ! 
See the lion toss his free limbs on the prairie I Standing 
in Kansas, with the spirit of John Brown hovering over 
him, his name written on every hill-top, hear the old Gov- 
ernor proclaim, " All men shall have the ballot or none ; 
all men shall have the bullet or no-ne." Crossing into 
Missouri, he says, the principle that every man should 
own the soil he tills, and the head and hands he works 
with, "is going through; it is bound to go through"; 
when a by-stander said, " Not here," he retorted, " Yes, 
here. As it is has gone through eighteen States of the 
Union, it is bound to go through the other fifteen. It is 
bound to go through all of the thirty-three States of the 
Union, for the simple reason that it is going through the 
world." [Prolonged applause.] 

That smacks of o:ood old-fashioned John Brown and 
Garrison Abolition, — not non-extension I I know Mr. 
Everett will deem such words very indiscreet. [Laugh- 
ter.] I knew an old lady to whom a friend had given a 
nice silk umbrella. She had kept it standing in a corner 
twenty years, when one day her grandson seized it to go 
out. " You 're not going to take that out in the wet ! " 
she exclaimed. " Never, while I live ! " This is just 
like Mr. Everett's free speech, always laid up in cotton ! 
[Laughter and applause.] 

They say, if you stand on the prairie of an August night 
at full moon, you can hear the corn grow, so quick are 
nature's processes out there. Had you been by Governor 
Seward that day, you might have heard him grow. [Loud 
applause.] 



314 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

And as Seward gi'ows, so grow millions of others, and 
so the world moves. " The sword," says Victor Hugo, 
"is but a hideous flash in the darkness, — Right is an 
eternal ray." Wait ! Be patient ! In 1760, what Bos- 
ton rebel boys felt, James Otis spoke, George Washington 
achieved, and Everett praises to-day. The same routine 
will go on. What fanatics feel. Garrison prints, some 
future Seward will achieve, and, at the safe distance of 
half a century, some coui'tly Everett will embalm in 
matchless panegyrics. [Cheers.] 

You see exactly what my hopes rest upon. Growth ! 
The Republican party have undertaken a problem, the 
solution of which will force them to our position. Not 
Mr. Seward's " Union and Liberty," wliich he stole and 
poisoned from Webster's " Liberty and Union." No ; 
their motto will soon be, " Liberty first," a long pause, 
then " Union afterwards." [Applause and a solitary 
hiss.] 

In 1842, Lindley had finished the railway at Hamburg, 
and was to open it, when the great fire broke out. The 
self-satisfied citizens called the Englishman to see how well 
their six-penny squirts and old pails could put out the fire. 
But it raged on, till one quarter of the city was in ruins. 
" Mynherr Lindley, what shall we do ? " cried the fright- 
ened Senators of Hamburg. " Let me blow up a couple 
of streets," he answered. " Never, never, never." An- 
other day of flames. " Mynherr Lindley, blow up the 
streets and welcome, only save us." " Too late," replied 
the engineer. " To do that, I must blow up the Senate- 
House itself." They debated an hour, and then said, 
" Mynherr Lindley, save us in your own way." In one 
hour, the Senate-House was in ruins, and the fire ceased. 
" Be quiet, Mr. Garrison," said 1830. " Don't you see 
our six-penny Colonization Society, and om' old-fashioned 
pails of church resolves, nicely copied and laid away in 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 315 

vestries ? See how we '11 put out this fire of slavery." 
But it bxu'ned on fiercer, fiercer. " What shall we do 
now ? " asked startled Whiggery. " Keep the new States 
free, abolish slavery in the District, shut the door against 
Texas." " Too much," said Whiggery ; " we are busy 
now making Webster President, and proving that Mr. 
Everett never had an antislavery idea." But the flames 
roll on. Republicanism proposes to blow up a street or 
two. No, no ; nothing but to blow up the Senate-House 
will do ; and soon frightened Hamburg will cry, " Myn- 
herr Garrison, Mynherr Garrison, save us on your own 
terms ! " [Loud applause.] 

You perceive my hope of freedom rests on these rocks : 
1st, mechanical progress. First man walked, dug the earth 
with his hands, ate what he could pick up ; then he sub- 
dues the horse, invents the plough, and makes the water 
float him down stream ; next come sails, wind-mills, and 
water-power ; then sewing-machines lift woman out of 
torture, steam marries the continents, and the telegraph 
flashes news like sunlight over the globe. Every step 
made hands worth less, and brains worth more ; and that 
is the death of slavery. You can make apples grow one 
half pippin and the other half russet. They say that the 
Romans could roast one half of a boar, and boil the other 
side. [Laughter.] But I am sure you cannot make a 
nation with one half steamboats, sewing-machines, and 
Bibles, and the other half slaves. Then another rock of 
my hope is these Presidential canvasses, — the saturnalia 
of American life, — when slaves like Seward are unchained 
from the Senate-House, as of old in Rome, and let loose 
on the prairies, to fling all manner of insult on their mas- 
ters. He may veil it all hereafter in dignified explana- 
tions, but the prairies give back an hundred-fold for all 
seed dropped there. [Apj^lause.] Then the ghost of 
John Brown makes Virginia quick to calculate the profit 



316 lS^oln'S election. 

and loss of slavery. Beside this, honest men, few, but the 
salt of the times, and school-houses and pulpits, and now 
and then a stray prince, who, looking down South, de- 
clines to venture among a barbarous people, lest, unlike 
St. Paul's case, they show him very little kindness. So, 
with trade, art, letters, conscience, fashion, now and then 
a college redeemed from old fogies, now and then a saint, 
and now and then a hero lent us by heaven, we may 
come at last to be as wise as Napoleon, and believe 
" there is no power without justice '* ; we may grow to 
be as good Christians as Cicero, and hold that " baseness 
can never be expedient"; we may be as good Protes- 
tants as Tocqueville, and declare that " whoever love? 
freedom for anything but freedom's self, is made to be a 
slave." 

It is indeed cheering to notice the general tone of 
speaking in this canvass ; — the much nobler tone of Mr. 
Seward, for instance, in speaking of the Union on the 
prairies, than it used to be. I recollect a striking picture 
he drew in 1850 of. the value of the Union, and every line 
was dollars! "Amplitude of territory," increase of popu- 
lation, " fields, workshops, ships, mines, the plough, loom, 
anvil, canals, railways, steamboats," and the "navy," — 
all earthborn. Now he cries. Whoever says trade is the 
cement of the Union, libels the idea of American civiliza- 
tion. That is good.! [Applause.] 

The saddest thing in the Union meetings of last year 
was the constant presence, in all of them, of the clink of 
coin, — the whir of spindles, — the dust of trade. You 
would have imagined it was an insurrection of pedlers 
against honest men. [Laughter.] Mr. Everett at Fan- 
euil Hall, when he sought for the value of the Union, 
could only bewail the loss of our "commercial inter- 
course," the certainty of " hostile tariffs," and danger to 
the " navy " ! And this is Hterally all the merits of the 



LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 317 

Union which he catalogues ! No ; I do him injustice. 
He does ask, trembling, in case of disunion, " Where, O 
where, will be the flag of the United States?" Well, I 
think the Historical Society had better take it for their 
Museum. [Laughter and applause.] 

Mr. O'Connor, too, who gave the key-note to the New 
York meeting. The only argument he has for the Union 
is his assurance that, if we dissolve, there '11 be no more 
" marble store fronts " on Broadway, and no brown-stone 
jmlaces in the Fifth Avenue ! Believe me, this is literally 
all he named, except one which Mr. Everett must have 
been under the influence of an anodyne to have forgotten, 
but which, perhaps, it is better, on the whole, for Mr. 
O'Connor, being an Irishman^ to recollect. It is this : in 
case of dissolving, we shall no longer own the grave of 
Washington, which, Mr. Everett having paid for, the 
New York peddling orator finds it hard to lose ! And so 
it strikes me ! 

But I must confess, those pictures of the mere industrial 
value of the Union made me profoundly sad. I look, as, 
beneath the skilful pencil, trait after trait leaps to glowing 
life, and ask at last. Is this all ? Where are the nobler 
elements of national purpose and life ? Is this the whole 
fruit of ages of toil, sacrifice, and thought, — those cunning 
fingers, the overflowing lap, labor vocal on every hillside, 
and commerce whitening every sea, — all the dower of 
one haughty, overbearing race '' The zeal of the Puritan, 
the faith of the Quaker, a century of Colonial health, and 
then this large civilization, does it result only in a work- 
shop, — fops melted in baths and perfumes, and men grim 
with toil? Raze out," then, the Eagle from our banner, 
and paint instead Niagara used as a cotton-mill ! 

O no ! not such the picture my glad heart sees when I 
look forward. Once plant deep in the nation's heart the 
love of right, let there grow out of it the firm purpose of 



318 LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 

duty, and then from tlie higher plane of Christian man- 
hood we can put aside on the right hand and the left these 
narrow, childish, and mercenary considerations. 

** Leave to the soft Campanian 

His baths and his perfumes ; 
Leave to the sordid race of Tyre 

Their dyeing-vats and looms ; 
Leave to tlie sons of Carthage 

The rudder and the oar ; 
Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs, 

And scrolls of wordy lore " ; — 

but for us, the children of a purer civilization, the pioneers 
of a Christian future, it is for us to found a Capitol whose 
corner-stone is Justice, and whose top-stone is Liberty; 
within the sacred precincts of whose Holy of Holies dwell- 
eth One who is no respecter of persons, but hath made of 
one blood all nations of the earth to serve him. Crowding 
to the shelter of its stately arches, I see old and young, 
learned and ignorant, rich and poor, native and foreign, 
Pagan, Christian, and Jew, black and white. Id one glad, 
harmonious, triumphant procession I 

« Blest and thriee blest the Roman 

Who sees Rome's brightest day ; 
Who sees that long victorious pomp 

Wind down the sacred way, 
And through the belIo%\'ing Forum, 

And round the suppliant's Grove, 
Up to the everlasting gates 

Of Capitolian .Tovo • •• 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 



" On Sunday forenoon," says the Liberator of December 21, I860, 
" the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society (Theodore Parker's Fra- 
ternity) held their usual Sunday meeting in Music Hall. It having 
been rumored for several days previous, that Mr. Phillips was likely 
to be mobbed and assaulted, a large detachment of police was in 
attendance at the hall, at an early hour. Before the services com- 
menced, large numbers of the police were stationed in two small 
rooms adjoining the platform. Others were stationed in various parts 
of the hall, and building. Members of the detective police force were 
also present 

" The regular religious exercises of the day were conducted in the 
usual manner." 



1WAS present here last Sundaj, and noticed that some 
of the friends of the speaker expressed their sympathy 
with his sentiments by applause. You will allow me to 
request that to-day, at least, we preserve the usual, deco- 
rum of this place and this hour, and listen — even if you 
should like anything particularly — in silence. 

About a fortnight ago, — on the 3d of this month, — 
certain men, supported by the Mayor, broke Tip an anti 
slavery meeting. I propose to consider that morning, aa 
illustrating American education. Some of you may think 
that everybody talks, now, of slavery, free speech, and the 
negro. That is true ; and I am not certain that the long- 
est liver of you all will ever see the day when it will not 



320 MOBS AND EDUCATION. 

be so. The negro for fifty, or thirty, years has been the 
basis of our commerce, the root of pur poKtics, the pivot 
of our pulpit, the inspiration of ahnost all that is destined 
to live in our literature. For a hundred years, at least, 
our history will probably be a record of the struggles of a 
proud and selfish race to do justice to one tliat circum- 
stances have thrown into its power. The effects of slavery 
will not vanish in one generation, or even in two. It 
were a very slight evil, if they could be done away with 
more quickly. 

Fredrika Bremer said, the fate of the negro is the ro- 
mance of our history. It will probably be a long while, a 
very long while, before the needle of our politics will float 
free from this disturbance, before trade will cease to feel 
the shock of this agitation, before the pulpit can throw 
off vassalage to this prejudice and property, before letters 
take heart and dare to speak the truth. A bitter preju- 
dice mu^ be soothed, a bloody code repealed, a huckster- 
ing Constitution amended or made way with, ' social and 
industrial life rearrano-ed, and ministers allowed to take 
the Bible, instead of the Stock List, as the basis of their 
sermons. Meanwhile, you must expect that every shock 
and oscillation of the stormy elements will stir up the 
dregs of society, lewd fellows of the baser sort, to deeds 
of anger and outrage ; and meanwhile every honest and 
earnest man will speak, and every such man will be glad 
to hear, as occasion calls, of this the great duty that Provi- 
dence has placed in our hands. 

I bate no jot of trust that this noble trial of self-govern- 
ment will succeed. Heirs of a glorious past, we have 
manhood enough to be the benefactors of the future, and 
to hand down this hard-earned fabric, freed from its great- 
est, perhaps its only, danger. 

The planting of these states always amazed the casual 
observer, and has been a subject of the deepest interest to 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 321 

thoughtful men *' The wildest theories of the human 
reason were reduced to practice by a community so hum- 
ble that no statesman condescended to notice it, and a legis- 
lation without precedent was produced off-hand by the 
instincts of the people." The profoundest scholar of that 
day said, " No man is wiser for his learning," — a sentiment 
which Edmund Burke almost echoed ; and it seems as if 
our comparatively unlettered fathers proved it. They 
framed a government which, after two hundred years, is 
still the wonder and tlie study of statesmen. It was only 
another proof that governments are not made, they grow, 
that the hsart is the best logician, that character, which is 
but cf -^sin to instinct, is a better guide than philosophy. 
Wordsworth said, of a similar awakening : 

*< A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules. 
Among the hei'dsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
More for mankind, at this unhappy day. 
Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 

That sunrise has colored the whole mornini*: of our his- 
tory. It is the cardinal principle of our national life, that 
God has o-iven every man sense enousjh to manao-e his 
own affairs. Out of that, by a short process, come uni- 
versal suffrage and the eligibility of every man to office. 
The majority rules, and law rests on numbers, not on 
intellect or virtue. A sound rule, and, if not the only one 
consistent with freedom and progress, at least the one that 
best serves these. But the harm is, that, while theoreti- 
cally holding that no vote of the majority can authorize 
injustice, we practically consider public opinion the real 
test of what is true and what is false ; and hfjnce, as a 
result, the fact which Tocqueville has noticed, that prac- 
tically our institutions protect, not the interests of the 
whole community, but the interests of the majority. 
Every man knows best how to manage his own affairs. 
Simple statement, perfectly sound; but we mix it up 

21 



322 MOBS AM) EDUCATION. 

somehow with that other rule, that every man is ehgibk 
to office, and then we hurry on to the habit of considering 
every man competent for everything. Does a man achieve 
success in some particular point, we hail him a universal 
Crichton, and endow him with a genius for all work. A 
mechanic invents a new stitch in a carpet-web ; straight- 
Avay he is named for Congress. Does a man edit a Re- 
spectable Daily to bankruptcy, we put liim on a commission 
to choose for us water not fit to drink, or let him carry a 
railroad half-way to ruin, by paying dividends that were 
never earned. That militia colonel survived a Western 
brawl, — call it a battle and a victory, and choose him 
President at once. This man is a brilliant historian, — 
send him Ambassador to England. Another has argued 
ably an india-rubber case, — send him to fade out in the 
Senate. Does a man fail utterly, — a bankrupt poet or 
office-seeker, — he edits a newspaper. We lack, entirely, 
discrimination. Because a man is entitled to draw upon 
us for fifty dollars, we put a thousand to his credit. That 
a man edits the Tribune so as to pay, — no very high 
order of talent, — is no proof that he knows better than 
other men who should be President of the United States. 
Bayard Taylor may be a genius and a traveller, without 
the least trace of patriotism or the least spark of a gentle- 
man. A hundred years ago, you must have served an 
apprenticeship of seven years to make a shoe ; noAv talk 
seven months on the right side, you may be Governor of a 
State. 

I said that, in spite of the heedlessness and good nature 
of this mistake, the rule that every man should be eligible 
to office is the best rule you can have. Our large measure 
of national success, in spite of this heedlessness, shows how 
truly the Swede spoke when he said, Quantula sapientia 
regitur mundus, — "How little wit it takes to hold office ! " 
But, though life be long and sunny, one fit of severe ill 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 323 

ness is a great evil. It is quite true, that routine incapa- 
city stumbles along very well at common times ; but there 
come hours when we need a pilot, and then we suffer. 
Such an hour we have just passed through. 

Certain men, who seem utterly ignorant of the principle, 
that only by letting each man speak exactly what he sees 
fit, at the time he chooses, can the progress of truth be 
secured, attempted to put down certain other men, assem- 
bled to discuss the abolition of slavery. I want to look at 
that attempt as illustrating the ignorance of the actors, the 
ignorance of the press, and the incapacity of the city gov- 
ernment. And I take this subject specially because it 
enables me to lay before you a correct account of the 
course of events that morning, which no journal of the 
city has bestirred itself to procure. And I seize this, the 
first opportunity given me, to do justice to both parties, 
— the assailants and the assailed. 

Look first at the press. With the exception of The 
Atlas and Bee, no one of the daily papers has uttered one 
word of hearty, fitting rebuke of the mob. They have all 
serious objections to mobs in the abstract, but none at all 
to mobs in the street, none to this particular mob. This 
was not a case of virtuous men refusing to obey a bad law, 
of whom it has been well said, " They do not dispute the 
right of the majority to command, they only appeal from 
the sovereignty of the nation to the sovereignty of man- 
kind." But this was a blow at the right of free speech, a 
right which no sane man in our age and land denies. Yet 
you have still to read the first word of fitting, fearless, 
hearty rebuke, from the Boston daily press, of a mob, 
well dressed, met to crush free speech. I have known 
Boston for thirty years. I have seen many mobs. With 
one exception, I have yet to see the first word of honest 
rebuke, from the daily press, of a well-dressed mob met to 
crush honest men ; and that exception was the Boston 



6Z^ MOBS^f^ EDUCATION. 

Daily Advocate of Mr. Hallett, in 1835 and 1837. Let 
me say, in passing, that it is a singular result of our insti- 
tutions, that we have never had in Boston any but well- 
dressed mobs. Still they are dangerous precedents, — 
well-dressed men hire hungry mechanics to mob free 
speech. Beware ! such men may " better the instruc- 
tion." The " flour moDs " followed close on the pro- 
slavery mobs in New York. But such a press, — what 
a tool, what a despicable tool ! 

The press will think me unjustifiable, perhaps, for they 
affect to have discovered that there was no mob, only the 
majority taking rightful possession of a public meeting. 
We will consider that by and by. 

Thd press says the mob was composed of " Boston gen- 
tlemen." A very natural mistake for a press which does 
not know a mob Avhen it sees it. But can we let that 
description stand ? Broadcloth and fine linen do not make 
a gentleman ! Ill manners and ignorance do not make 
one. Earning a right to twelve months in the House of 
Correction does not make one. [Laughter.] Resisting 
the laws to help the stock market does not. Running, 
before you are sent, with volunteer haste, to do the dirty 
work of base men, does not make one. And yet these are 
the only colors by which men before unseen made them- 
selves visible that day on the surface of aftairs. One must 
be born again into the Kingdom of Mammon, before he 
thinks such men gentlemen. And as the ringleaders were 
not born in Boston, let us save the dear old town from the 
disgrace of having them called Boston gentlemen. The 
gossip of the street says they were excusable on account 
of pecuniary losses, — they were men out of employ. The 
ringleader said he came there to save his property. Let 
us examine of what material the mob was really made. 
We have a right to inquire, it is important we should 
know, who make up this Chamber of Inquisitors, this new 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 825 

Star-Chamber, which undertakes to tell us, as Archbishop 
Laud and Charles Stuart told our fathers, what creed we 
shall hold, and what public meetings we shall attend. 
Who were they? 

Weak sons of moderate fathers, dandled into effeminacy, 
of course wholly unfit for business. But overflowing trade 
sometimes laps up such, as it does all obtainable instru- 
ments. Instead of fire-engines, we take pails and dippers, 
in times of sore need. But such the first frost nips into 
idleness. Narrow men, ambitious of oflice, fancying that 
the inheritance of a million entitles them to political ad- 
vancement. Bloated distillers, some rich, some without 
wit enough to keep the money they stole. Old families 
run to seed in respectable dulness, — fruges consumere 
nati^ — born only to eat. Trading families, in the third 
generation, playing at stock-jobbing to lose in State Street 
what their fathers made by smuggling in India. Sweep 
in a hundred young rogues, the grief of mothers and the 
disgrace of their names, good as naughts to fill up a place 
in what is called "society," and entitled as such to shrink 
from notice, — but the motes we do not usually see get 
looked at when they trouble our eyes. Snobbish sons of 
fathers lately rich, anxious to show themselves rotten be- 
fore they are ripe. [Hitherto there had been no demon- 
strations from the hearers, except occasional suppressed 
laughter at the speaker's sarcasms. The laughter here 
was received with hisses by a portion of the audience.] 
These, taking courage from the presence of bolder rogues, 
some from jail and others whom technical skill saved 
therefrom, — the whole led by a third-rate lawyer broken 
down to a cotton-clerk [hisses], borrowing consequence 
from married wealth, — not one who ever added a dollar, 
much less an idea, to the wealth of the city, not one able 
to give a reason or an excuse for the prejudice that is in 
him, — these are the men, this is the house of nobles, 



826 MOBSA^ EDUCATION. 

whose leave we are to ask before we speak and hold meet- 
ings. These are the men who tell ms, the children of the 
Pilgrims, the representatives of Endicott and Wmthrop, 
of Sewall and Quincy, of Hancock and Adams and Otis, 
what opinions we shall express, and what meetings we 
shall hold ! These are the men who, the press tells us, 
being a majority, took rightful possession of the meeting 
of the 3d of December, [applause and cries of '' Good,"] 
and, " without violating the right of free speech," organized 
it, and spoke the sober sense of Boston ! 

I propose to examine the events of that morning, in 
order to see what idea our enlightened press entertain of 
the way in which " gentlemen " take possession of a 
meeting, and the fitness of those "gentlemen" to take 
possession of a meeting. 

On the 3d of December, certain gentlemen — Rev. J. 
Sella Martin, James Redpath, Mr. Eldridge, Mr. O'Con- 
nor, Mr. Le Barnes — hired the Temple for a Convention 
to assemble at their request. The circular which they 
issued a month before, in November, invited the " leaders 
and representatives of all the antislavery bodies, and those 
who have done honor to their own souls by the advocacy 
of human freedom," to meet them in convention. Cer- 
tainly the fops and the clerks of Boston could not come 
under that description. The notice published the day 
before proclaimed that the convention " was not met for 
debate, that each speaker should confine himself to giving, 
briefly, his views on the question, ' How shall American 
slavery be abolished ? ' " Does Mr. Fay, or any one of his 
associates, dare to say, in the presence of the citizens of 
Boston, that he entered that hall to join in good faith in 
any such investigation ? The temper and quality of the 
meeting was shown by the statement of that notice, that 
it chose the anniversary of the " martyrdom " of John 
Brown as the day for its meeting, and mentioning his 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 327 

death as " too glorious to need defence or eulogy." If 
any one of Mr. Fay's associates entered that hall with 
written resolutions in their j^ockets, denouncing John 
Brown and expressing " horror for his piratical, bloody, 
and nefarious attempt," by what claim, as gentlemen, do 
they justify their presence there ? 

But waive that, and grant that they were rightfidly 
present. When a convention assembles at the call of a 
committee of gentlemen, it is a well-recognized and settled 
right and custom of the callers to organize that conven- 
tion through a committee, or otherwise to appoint officers 
for the body. If the committee report a Hst, it is some- 
times put to vote, and sometimes not. When a vote is 
taken, it is mere form ; for all well-disposed men, if they 
contest a convention, uniformly leave it the right to or- 
ganize itself, and meet it, if anywhere, on the passage of 
its resolutions. In. conformity with this custom, the Eev. 
J. Sella Martin took the floor as temporary Chairman. 
He appointed a committee to aj^point officers. That com- 
mittee reported a list, with Mr. Sanborn of Concord as 
Chairman. Mr. Martin announced him, as he had an en- 
tire, well-recognized right to do, for the Chairman of that 
me e tin or. 

^ But suppose the Convention chose to insist on its strict 
right, and to organize itself without regard to its callers. 
Then it was perfectly in order for any member to address 
the temporary chair, and make a motion to that effect. Did 
any one do it ? No. On the contrary, one person, who 
seems to shrink from having his name known, nominated 
Mr. Richard S. Fay as chairman [" Good ! " cheers and 
hisses], and put the motion. This anonymous skulker 
does not seem to know parliamentary law enouo-h to re- 
member that he should address the chair, or that he 
should wait to have his motion seconded; but without 
that, and without any call for the nays, Mr. Fay assumes 



328 MOBSA^ 



EDUCATION. 



to be Chairman. There having been, then, in the eye of 
strict parliamentary law, no motion, — for all the books lay 
it down that " no motion can be made without addressing 
the chair," — there having been no motion, no seconding, 
no call for the nays, there being no announcement of the 
vote, either by the Chairman or by Mr. Anonymous, when 
Mr. Richard S. Fay walked to that ^^latform and assumed 
to be Chairman, he announced himself the ringleader of a 
mob [applause, and one cry of " No ! "] by the strictest 
letter of parliamentary law. Journals which undertake to 
know, style him the rightful Chairman. And when Mr. 
Douglass, in common courtesy, handed him a glass of 
water, Mr. Fay says, " This acknowledges me as Chair- 
man ! " Profound logician, this Mr. Fay ! A glass of 
water is his title to office, and Mr. Frederick Douglass is 
authorized to confer it. 

And then commences an exhibition of his wonderful 
powers as a presiding officer. The moment a chairman 
takes his seat, the first duty is the call for the appointment 
of secretary and other officers. This wonderful meeting 
had no officer, except its equally wonderful Chairman. 
Unburdening himself of his coat, he was not self-possessed 
enough to find in his pocket the scroll of resolutions which 
every one saw protruding from it, — whereupon he said, 
" I thought I had got among honest men." Some by- 
standers thought this insolence. I am rather inclined to 
believe it possible, that, having escaped from the mob to 
our platform, he was congratulating himself upon having 
gotten for once among honest men. [Much laughter.] 
He then undertakes to read the resolutions, and offer them 
to the Convention, ig-norant ao;ain — imiorant ao;ain — 
that there was just one man in that meeting, and only one, 
who had no right to offer a resolution, and that was him- 
self, on his own theory ; for every boy knows, except this 
young cotton-clerk, that no presiding officer is entitled to 
offer a resolution. 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 329 

Following, then, the example of Mr. Anonymous, who 
nominated him, he does not wait to have the resolutions 
seconded, he does not call for the nays, but he declares 
them carried. This could not have been fright, for al- 
though he was observed to tremble and grow pale when 
hundreds cried out " Shame ! " at the readino; of his 
third and fourth resolves, yet some one saying, " Don't 
be frightened, we won't hurt you," had considerably re- 
assured him. [Laughter.] Then somebody makes a mo- 
tion to adjourn. Mr. Fay puts it. While he is doing so, 
Mr. Frederick Douglass addresses him. He turns, intro- 
duces Mr. Douglass to the audience, and gives him the 
floor, ignorant again — ignorant again — that a motion to 
adjourn is not debatable. Some one in the audience, 
while Mr. Douglass is speaking, reminds him there is a 
motion before the house. This vimlant Chairman waves 
the speaker aside, puts the motion to adjourn, declares it 
carried, and then introduces Mr. Douglass again to this 
adjourned Convention, and bids him remember the rule of 
the call, to speak briefly, and to the point ! [Great laugh- 
ter.] And then this adjourned Chairman of a dead Con- 
vention sits and listens half an hour to a speech from Mr. 
Douglass. Whereafter, another man makes a motion to 
adjourn ; he puts it, declares it carried, and then, — on 
the poet's principle, "twice he slew the slain," — recog- 
nizing, I suppose, that even his mob, twice adjourned, is 
done with, takes his hat and vanishes, — this orderly Chair- 
man ! 

Common chairmen, before quitting their conventions, 
appoint a committee of finance, to see that the expenses 
are paid ; but this opulent and magnanimous, Union-loving 
Chairman, [cheers and some hisses,] having announced 
that he came to the hall to save his property, does it by 
leaving his victims to pay the expenses. [Laughter.j 
And when Mr. Hayes reminded him, during the pendency 



330 MOBS AND EDUCATION. 

of the motion to adjourn, that he must not do so until he 
had arranged for the payment for the.hall, this representa- 
tive of State Street defied Mr. Hayes to compel him to 
pay for the hall he had used. I hlush, even for State 
Street, under such a fact. And the gallant men who 
followed him — O shame even to Boston dandies ! — were 
heard encouraging each other with cries of " The police 
are with us, — the other side pay for them, and we use 
them!" 

Some men assert that Mr. Fay really came to that hall 
to put down free speech by violence. As it was said that 
no man was ever so wise as Lord Thurlow looked, so these 
citizens think no honest man was ever so ignorant as Mr. 
Fay appeared. I am inclined to believe that he came 
there designing to crush that Convention in a parliamen- 
tary way, but did not know how to do it. Like the captain 
of the Maine schooner caught in our harbor narrows [here 
a youth in the gallery raised the mob cry, " All up," which 
failed, however, to produce any sensation], who, when 
some one asked, "Who captains this schooner?" called 
back, " I undertook to captain her, but find it rather too 
much for me"; — so Mr. Fay undertook to captain a par- 
liamentary 7nob, but found it rather too much for him. 
Being fully determined, however, to crush the Convention, 
and finding the quiet and trained friends of it able to out- 
wit and outgeneral him, he took refuge in violence. He 
challenged his opponent to a duel, then knocked him over 
the head with the but of his pistol while his back was 
turned. Lord George Bentinck leaped from the sporting- 
field and the race-course to the leadership of the House 
of Commons. Perhaps Mr. Fay thought he could do as 
much. 

After the kid-gloved mobocrat had left the hall, Mr. 
Sanborn, quietly requesting the real fi'iends of order to 
remain seated while the mob followed its leader, showed 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 331 

them that all their labor had been in vain. Then Mr. J. 
Murray Howe, without any flimsy veil of parliamentary 
pretext, a bully girdled by bullies, failing to excite any 
violent resistance, urged or incited the police to arrest all 
whom his followers struck, on the ground of removing the 
cause of the disturbance. And the shameless Mayor closed 
the scene [hisses], — the plot unmasked by the quiet dis- 
cipline of the friends of order was disclosed, and the City 
Government succored its defeated accomplices by clearing 
the hall in the prostituted names of law and order. [Loud 
cheers and some hisses.] 

I have named only the leaders of this mob, and described 
the pitiful quality of their followers. You will ask me. How 
did such a mass influence the Mayor ? I am sorry to say, 
that among that crowd were men influential by wealth and 
position, men seldom seen in an antislavery meeting, whose 
presence there at that unusual hour, — ten o'clock in the 
morning, — sitting in silence, was an encouragement to 
their personal friends, the mob. You may see, still look- 
ing down on Washington Street, the gilded names of Law- 
rence and Dickinson, and, side by side, the proud motto, 
" The Union, the Constitution, the Enforcement of the 
Laws." [Cheers.] One of those names, which the city 
has hitherto loved to honor, was present in that crowd, in 
a class of meetings where he is seldom seen, — never at 
ten o'clock in the morning, — while his personal friends 
resisted, with the encouragement of his unusual presence, 
the enforcement of the most sacred of all laws, that of free 
speech. Need I explain any otherwise the servility of the 
Mayor ? 

Some men say that free speech was really crushed out 
on that occasion. No. On that same day, that same meet- 
ing held a session, addressed by the most hated of its 
speakers, expressing their opinions on slavery and the 
scene of the morning. The exact, literal truth is, that 



332 MOBS^WD EDUCATION. 

Mr. Richard S. Fay stole the Tremont Temple from those 
who had hired it. Let us hope he will pay his debts with- 
out going through court. Those men'whom he fought can 
say they were never sued yet for any hall they had used ; 
he cannot say as much to-day. Doubtless they intended 
to crush free speech ; but do not let us dignify Jack Shep- 
pard and Dickens's Fagin into Cromwells and Bonapartes. 
These mobocrats intended to be Cromwells. So did the 
two tailors who undertook to tear down the throne of 
George III., and issued the famous proclamation, " We, 
the people of England." History does not record that 
they succeeded ; neither did their imitators on the 3d of 
December. Still, these angry and misguided men in- 
curred very grave responsibility. Stealing a hall is not 
very bad in men who hardly know what they are about. 
Violating the rights of your neighbors may be forgiven, 
when the parties offending will soon repent, and those 
rights are no more affected than the sun by the cloud that 
passes over him. But when Mr. Fay had housed himself 
in luxury and quiet, at night, that lawless and coward 
spirit which he had stirred up and let loose broke into the 
houses of our hated and friendless colored j)eople, pursued 
any one of them it dared follow, finding him alone, cruelly 
beat, almost to death, several, and ill-treated many of them. 
If any one of those mangled men had died of his wounds, 
Richard S. Fay, in the sight of God and all honest men, 
if not of the law also, had been a murderer. The atone- 
ment he owes to our city which he has disgraced, is a pub- 
lic acknowledgment of his crime. The compensation he 
owes to those men pillaged and beaten by his followers, is 
to see that, so far as gold can, their sufferings are allevi- 
ated. Let us hope that the wealth and the influence 
which countenanced his wrong will move to aid him in his 
repentance. 

The picture is one of men undertaking work for which 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 833 

their education never fitted them, — a common mistake of 
American life. There are thousands among us engaged 
in mechanical routine whose souls have large grasp, and 
take in the universe. Critical houi's unveil the lustre of 
such spirits. Our self-made men are the glory of our in- 
stitutions. But this is a case of men undertaking to join 
in public debate and preside over public meetings, whose 
souls are actually absorbed in pricing calico and adding up 
columns of figures. It is a singular sight. White men, 
having enjoyed the best book education, to see them strug- 
ling with two colored men, whose only education was op- 
pression and the antislavery enterprise ! But in that con- 
test of parliamentary skill, the two colored men never made 
a mistake, while every step of their opponents was folly 
upon folly. Of course, upon the great question of moral 
right, there is no (Comparison. History gives us no closer 
parallel than the French Convention of Lafayette and 
Mirabeau assailed by the fish-women of the streets. 

Let us turn now to the part of the City Government. 
Every man eligible to olhce, — but with a race like ours, 
fired with the love of material wealth, with a continent 
given us by God to subdue and crowd it with cities, to 
unite the oceans with rails, — in such an age and with 
such a race, trade must absorb all the keenest energies of 
each generation. The consequence is, that politics takes 
up with small men, men without grasp enough for large 
business ; with leisure, therefore, on their hands ; men 
popular because they have no positive opinions, — these 
are the men of politics. The result is, as Tocqueville 
has hinted, that our magistrates never have more edu- 
cation than we give to the mass, that they have no 
personal experience of their own. Such men do very 
well for ordinary occasions, when there is nothing to 
do. Common times only try common men. Li a calm 
sea all boats alike show mastership in floating. On the 



334 mobsaS^ 



EDUCATION. 



3d day of the month, we might have supposed every man 
to know that a meeting was to be protected against a 
mob, that the duty of the poHce was not to settle disputed 
questions and motions, but only to see that they were 
argued out without violence, — that they were there to 
arrest any man who committed an assault. The absurdity 
of turning the Convention out of doors to quiet its tumult, 
is the method of a quack who stabs his patient in order 
to cure the disease. 

But our Mayor, poor as he is, did know all this. He 
was awed out of his duty by the social position of the 
mobocrats. The individual policemen were respectable 
and orderly, evidently disposed to enforce order, had they 
been allowed. No complaint can be made of them. But 
we know neither them nor their chief. For us, the Mayor 
represents the City Government. I hold him, single and 
alone, responsible for the success of the mob. [Slight 
hissing.] Abolitionists are the best judges ; they have 
been through many such a scene. They assert that, if 
they could have been left alone, they could have quelled 
that mob, unaided. [Derisive laughter.] Mr. Hayes, of 
the Temple, the most competent witness in the city, 
offered the Mayor, on the spot, to keep order within the 
building if he could be allowed six men ; and he has 
publicly avowed his belief, that, had the chief simply an- 
nounced, from the platform, his purpose to keep order im- 
partially, order would have reigned ; but the mob knew that 
the police, in spite of their individual feelings, must obey 
orders, and were therefore, of course, on the mob side. 
The rioters were constantly boasting, " The police are all 
right," " They are with us," " Three cheers for the po- 
lice ! " [Cheers and hisses.] 

To the courtesy and forbearance of the Abolitionists the 
Chief of Police has borne public witness. They were the 
only persons assaidted, yet they were the onlv persons 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 835 

arrested. They were the only persons knocked down, 
and they were the only persons carried from the hall by 
the police. The chief says that individual Abolitionists 
were removed by mistake. Singular that this mistake 
should never have happened to those who were using their 
canes and their lists, and should have taken place only in 
regard to persons conspicuous for their courtesy and for- 
bearance ! 

The friends of the Mayor urge that the mob was too 
strono; for the whole force of the 2;overnment. Let him 
show that he spoke one word, that he lifted one finger, 
that he remonstrated with one rioter, and we will grant 
him that excuse. But the pilot who says the storm is too 
strong for him must show that he put his hand once, at 
least, upon the helm, to see whether it would obey the 
hokl. 

Our present Mayor is not singular ; he does not stand 
alone. We have not had a decent Mayor for ten years. 
[Sensation, and vehement hisses.] Vassals of the gTog 
shop, and mortgaged to State Street, what could you 
expect from them? Of course Smith and Bigelow are 
beneath notice, — mere hounds of the slave-hunt, a hand's- 
breadth ahead of the pack. But these other degenerate 
magistrates find here and there a predecessor to keep 
them in countenance ; indeed, all the Mayors on the 
Atlantic coast are their models, with one or two noble 
exceptions. That mob which Messrs. Fay and Howe 
inaugurated spent the night among our colored citizens' 
dwellings, beating, kicking, and stabbing all whom they 
met. The police were on special duty in those streets in 
the night. The morning opened, the courts assembled, 
the magistrate took his seat. The only person arrested 
for that night's disorder is one black boy, fourteen years 
old, who had defended himself against bullies ! 

I do not remember precisely the mob against the Irish 



in Broad Street, but I am told that the same is true of that 
riot, that none but those assaulted were arrested. I have 
known three cases of magistrates quelling mobs. One was 
Neal Dow, in Portland, — not necessary, some thought, 
to fire. But let us grant Portland her fame, — she has 
quelled a mob. Providence, also, under a magistrate 
whose name I wish I could remember, (Governor Arnold, 
I am told,) quelled her mob with bullets ; and last year, 
Mayor Henry, of Philadelphia, — a name that ought to be 
written in letters of gold, — taught purse-proud ignorance 
and brutality to obey the laws. The wealth of Philadel- 
phia petitioned him not to allow Mr. Curtis to lecture. 
One of the petitioners waited on him and said, " Sir, do 
you know the treasonable sentiments of Mr. Curtis ? " 
" No, sir," was the answer ; " I know only that it is my 
duty to protect him." "Do you know, sir, that the 
wealthiest houses have petitioned you to stop the meet- 
ing? " " Yes, sir." " What shall you do if they appear, 
and put a stop to the lecture ? " " Send them to the 
watch-house." [Applause.] Mr. Curtis lectured, and 
Mayor Henry was re-elected. While such men live, I 
am opposed to rotation in office. [Laughter.] 

It is a long while since we have had such a Mayor. 
Your magistrates have always needed twenty-four hours, 
and closetings with indignant citizens, before they learned 
their duties. In 1835, Mayor Lyman, — a lawyer, a 
scholar, a gentleman, — instead of protecting Mr. Garri- 
son, or dying in front of him, spent the critical hour of 
the mob's existence in vain intercessions with his personal 
friends, in pitiful appeals to drunken broadcloth, [slight 
hissing,] and went home to realize the noble opportunity 
he had lost of endearing his memory to law, liberty, and 
the good name of the city, to realize the grave duty he 
had failed to meet, and to spend his after life in bitter and 
unavailing regret over that disgraceful and wicked hour of 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 337 

his magistracy. But he lived, — he lived to repent ; and 
later services did endear his name to the Commonwealth. 
There is no evidence that our more recent Mayors know 
even enough to be ashamed. 

The men of that day lived to beg pardon of the very 
persons they had mobbed. All Boston glorified them, 
that month ; they walked State Street in pride. But 
you would think me cruel, to-day, if I gibbeted their 
names. The hour is near, it knocks at yonder door, when 
whoever reminds an audience that Richard S. Fay and 
Mayor Lincoln broke up an antislavery meeting will be 
considered, even by State Street and the Courier, bitter 
and uncharitable, [hisses,] as eminently unchristian, in 
reminding the disgraced and the forgotten of their sins. 

What was the meeting thus assailed ? It was a meeting 
met to discuss slavery, — a topic which makes the repub- 
lic tremble, the settlement of which is identical with the 
surviving of our government, — a topic upon which every 
press, every legislature, every magistrate, south of Mason 
and Dixon's line, flings defiance at the Union, amid the 
plaudits of Mr. Fay and his friends. What day was it ? 
The anniversary of the martyrdom of the only man whose 
name stirs the pulses of Europe in this generation. [De- 
risive laughter.] English statesmen confess never to have 
read a line of Webster. You may name Seward in 
Munich and Vienna, in Pestli or in Naples, and vacant 
eyes will ask you, "Who is he?" But all Europe, the 
leaders and the masses, spoke by the lips of Victor Hugo, 
when he said, *' The death of Brown is more than 
Cain killing Abel ; it is Washington slaying Spartacus." 
[Laughter from some parts of the hall, and from others 
applause.] 

What was the time of this meeting ? An hour when 
our Senators and Representatives were vindicating the 
free speech of Massachusetts in Washington, in the face 

22 



MoS^AND EDUCATION. 

of armed men. Are we to surrender it in the streets at 
home, to the hucksters and fops of the Exchange ? This 
day on which I speak, a year ago, those brave young 
hearts wliich held up John Brown's hands faced death 
without a murmur, for the slave's sake. In the lio-ht of 
their example, God forbid we should give up free speech ! 

Whom is it proposed to silence ? Men who for thirty 
years, from the ocean to Kansas, sacrificing reputation, 
wealth, position, seeing their houses pillaged, their friends 
mobbed in the streets, have forced this question on reluc- 
tant senates and statesmen, until at last, all other issues 
driven out of the arena, God chains this a^e to the re- 
demption of the slave. Victors in such a fight, after such 
a field, after having taught this nation, at such woful cost, 
the sacredness of free discussion, who are these traders 
that weio;h their siold against our rio-hts? Who is this 
boaster parading his two hundred thousand dollars, and 
telling us he will spend every one of them to " put down 
this agitation " ? He " put down this agitation " ! That 
attempt was announced before, from the steps of the Re- 
vere House. The unhappy statesman, defeated, heart- 
broken, sleeps by the solemn waves of the Atlantic. 
" Co7itempsi Catilince gladios, non tuos pertime seamy The 
half omnipotence of Webster we defied ; who heeds this 
pedler's empty Avind? 

How shall we prevent such insolent attempts for the 
future ? Educate the future Fays more thoroughly. 
Teach them the distinction between duties and dollars. 
Plant deep in the heart of the masses the conviction of 
the utter sacredness of the right of free speecli. Om- 
fathers made their sons hate the Pope so thoroughly, ^Jiat 
hatred of Popery is no longer an intellectual conviction, 
but has become a constituent element of Yankee blood 
and bone. Put the sacredness of free speech into the 
same condition. Carve in letters of gold in every 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 339 

scliool-Kouse this letter of our loved Governor elect, — 
the best word a Massachusetts Governor has said since 
the first Winthrop gave his fine definition of civil lib- 
erty. Mr. Andrew says : — 

" ' The right to think, to know, and to utter,' as John Milton 
said, is the dearest of all liberties. Without this right, there can 
be no liberty to any people ; with it, there can be no slavery." 

And Mr. Andrew goes on : — 

*' I care not for the truth or error of the opinions held or 
uttered, nor for the wisdom of the words or time of their at- 
tempted expression, when I consider this great question of fun- 
damental significance, this great right which must first be secure 
before free society can be said to stand on any foundation, but 
only on temporary or capricious props. 

" Rich or poor, white or black, great or small, wise or foolish, 
in season or out of season, in the right or in the wrong, whosoever 
will speak, let him speak, and whosoever will hear, let him hear. 
And let no one pretend to the prerogative of judging another 
man's liberty. In this respect there is, and there can be, no 
superiority of persons or privileges, nor the slightest pretext for 
any." 

Thank God for such a Governor to come ! [Applause.] 
Make that Massachusetts, and then we may stop a boy in 
the streets and make him Mayor, sure that, without need 
of thought or consultation, he will gird himself to protect 
unpopvilar free speech, and put down fashionable riot, in- 
stead of lazily protecting fashionable riot, and putting down 
unpopular free speech. 

I have used strong words. But I was born in Boston, 
and the good name of the old town is bound up with every 
fibre of my heart. I dare not trust myself to describe the 
insolence of men Avho undertake to dictate to you and me 
what we shall say in these grand old streets. But who 
can adequately tell the sacredness and the value of free 
speech ? Who can fitly describe the enormity of the 



340 MOBS AND EDUCATION. 

crime of its violation ? Free speech, at once the instru- 
ment and the guaranty and the bright consummate flower 
of all liberty. Free speech in these streets, once trod by 
Henry Vane, its apostle and champion. Free speech, in 
that language which holds the dying words of Algernon 
Sidney, its martyr. As Everett said, near forty years 
ago: — 

" I seem to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages, from 
the sepulchres of nations that died before the sight. They exhort 
us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, 
by the long trials of struggling humanity, by the awful secrets of 
the prison-house where the sons of Freedom have been immured, 
by the noble heads which have been brought to the block, by the 
eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light 
that is rising on the world. Greece cries to us by the convulsed 
lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes, and Rome pleads with 
us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully." 

Let us listen to the grave and weighty words of the 
nephew of Charles James Fox, Lord Holland, in his pro- 
test when British Tories tried to stop the discussion of 
Catholic Emancipation, — words of which Macaulay says, 
*' They state a chief article of the political creed of the 
Whigs with singular clearness, brevity, and force." 

" We are," Lord Holland says, " well aware that tli£ privileges 
of the people, the rights of free discussion, and the spirit and 
letter of our popular institutions, must render — and they are in- 
tended to render — the continuance of an extensive grievance, 
and of the dissatisfaction consequent thereupon, dangerous to the 
tranquillity of the country, and ultimately subversive of the au- 
thority of the state. Experience and theory alike forbid us to 
deny that effect of a free constitution : a sense of justice and a 
love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting it. But w^e have 
ahvays been taught to look for the remedy of such disorders in the 
redress of the grievances which justify them, and in the removal 
of the dissatisfaction from which they flow ; not in restraints on 



MOBS AND EDUCATION. 341 

ancient privileges, not m inroads on the right of public discussion, 
nor in violations of the principles of a free government'' 

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. 
The loved and the rich need no protection, — they have 
many friends and few enemies. We have praised our 
Union for seventy years. This is the first time it is 
tested. Has it educated men who know their rights, and 
dare to maintain them ? Can it bear the discussion of a 
great national sin, anchored deep in the prejudices and 
interests of millions ? If so, it deserves to live. If not, 
the sooner it vanishes out of the way the better. 

The time to assert rights is when they are denied ; the 
men to assert them are those to whom they are denied. 
The community which dares not protect its humblest and 
most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, 
no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. 



" At the conclusion of the exercises, Mr. Phillips's friends flocked 
upon the platform to congratulate him. After a while, Mr. Phillips left 
the platform, accompanied by several friends, who were joined, in the 
lower entry, by some twenty in number. As the party emerged from 
the building to the avenue, leading from the hall to Winter Street, a 
large crowd was found collected there, who set up various cries, such 
as ' There he is ! ' ' Crush him out ! ' ' Down with the Abolition- 
ists ! ' ' Bite his head off ! ' ' All up ! ' &c., and surged toward 
Mr. Phillips, with the manifest purpose of preventing his egress. In 
this, however, they were balked by the resolute front of his friends 
and the energy of the police, Avho forced the crowd to give way. 

" On entering Winter Street, the mob, which almost blockaded the 
street, yelled and hissed, and gave vent to their impotent rage by 
such cries as those given above ; but the party proceeded down the 
street, and up Washington Street, surrounded by a strong detachment 
of police, and followed by an immense throng of people, many of 
them, however, friends of Mr. Phillips, and determined to protect 
him from injury. No demonstrations of violence, happily, were made. 
The singular procession excited the attention of people living on the 



g42 MOBS AND EDUCATION. 

route largely, and the window, looking on the street were crowded 
:Hr.^?s e^x'pressing wonder and eurio^ty ArrWe at ^s Th n 

Towt and with n^anifest reluctance. So ended the d.g»-aceful scene. 
— Liberator. 



DISUNION.* 



THE office of the pulpit is to teach men their duty. 
Wherever men's thoughts influence their laws, it is 
the duty of the pulpit to preach politics. If it were j)os- 
sihle to conceive of a community whose opinions had no 
influence on their government, there the pulpit would 
have no occasion to talk of government. I never heard 
or knew of such a community. Though sheltered by 
Roman despotism, Herod and the chief priests abstained 
from this and that because they "feared the people." 
The Sultan dared to murder his Janizaries only when 
the streets came to hate them as much as he did. The 
Czar, at the head of a government whose constitution 
knows no check but poison and the dagger, yet feels the 
pressure of public opinion. Certainly, where pews are 
full of voters, no question but the sermon should be full 
of politics. 

" The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice." " The 
coA^enant with death " is annulled ; " the agi'eement 
with hell " is broken to pieces. The chain which has 
held the slave system since 1787 is parted. Thirty years 
ago. Southern leaders, sixteen years ago. Northern Aboli- 
tionists, announced their purpose to seek the dissolution of 
the American Union. Who dreamed that success would 
come so soon ? South Carolina, bankrupt, alone, with a 

* Lecture delivered in the Music Hall, January 20, 1861, — a large part of 
the Hall and the avenues to it occupied by the mob. 



844 ^DISUNION. 

hundred thousand more slaves than whites, four blacks to 
three wliites, within her borders, flings her gauntlet at the 
feet of twenty-five millions of people in defence of an idea, 
to maintain what she thinks her right. I would New 
England could count one State as fearless amon^ her six ! 
Call it not the madness of an engineer who stands in front 
of his cannon at the moment of discharge ; call it rather 
the forlorn hope of the mariner, seizing plank or spar in 
the fury of the storm. The mistake of South Carolina is, 
she fancies there is more chance of saving slavery outside 
of the Union than inside. Three States have followed her 
example. Probably the rest of the Slave States, or many 
of them, will find themselves unable to resist the infection, 
and then the whole merciless conspiracy of 1787 is ended, 
and timid men will dare to hate slavery without trembling 
for bread or life. 

Let us look at the country, — the North, the South, 
and the government. The South divided into three sec- 
tions : — 1st. Those who hold slaves exactly as they do 
bank-stock or land, — and of course love the Union, which 
enables them to treat man as property, — timid wealth 
shrinking from change, but so timid as to stand dumb. 
2d. Those who have ruled the nation sixty years, monop- 
olizing Presidents' chairs and Embassies ; defeated now, 
these plan, in earnest sincerity, for another nation with 
Presidencies and Embassies all to themselves. 3d. A class 
made up from these two, who cling to the Union in their 
hearts, but threaten loudly, well knowing the loudest 
threats get the best bargain. 

The object of the South is a separate confederacy, hop- 
ing they can stand long enough for the North to ask for 
annexation on their terms. 

Then comes the government, so called, — in reality a 
conspiracy against justice and honest men ; some of its 
members pilferers and some traitors, the rest pilferers and 



DISUNION. 345 

traitors too. Like all outgoing administrations, they have 
no wish to lessen the troubles of their successors by cur- 
ing the nation's hurt, — rather aggravate it. They have 
done all the mischief in their power, and long now only to 
hear the clock strike twelve on the fourth day of March. 

Then look at the North, divided into three sections : — 
1st. The defeated minority, glad of anything that troubles 
their conquerors. 2d. The class of Repubhcans led by 
Seward, offering to surrender anything to save the Union. 
[Applause.] Their gospel is the Constitution [applause], 
and the slave clause is their Sermon on the Mount. 
[Laughter and applause.] They think that, at the judg- 
ment-day, the blacker the sins they have committed to 
save the Union, the clearer will be their title to heaven. 
3d. The rest of the Republicans, led by the Tribune — 
all honor to the Tribune, faithful and true! — who con- 
sider their honor pledged to fulfil in office the promises 
made in the canvass. Their motto is : " The Chicacro 
platform, every inch of it ; not a hair's-breadth of the 
Territories shall be surrendered to slavery." [Applause.] 
But they, too, claim the cannon's mouth to protect forts, 
defend the flag, and save the Union. At the head of this 
section, we have every reason to believe, stands Mr. 
Abraham Lincoln. • 

All these are the actors on the stage. But the founda- 
tion on which all stand divides only into two parts : those 
who like slavery, and mean it shall last ; those who hate 
it, and mean it shall die. Li the boiling gulf goes on the 
perpetual conflict of acid and alkali ; all these classes are 
but bubbles on the surface. The upper millstone is rights 
and the lower wrong. Between them, governments and 
parchments, parties and compromises, are being slowly 
ground to powder. 

Broadly stated, the South plans a Southern Confederacy 
to uphold slavery, — the North clings to the Union to 



346 ^^isuNiON. 

uphold trade and secure growth. Without the Union, 
Mr. Seward tells us we can neither be safe, rich, strong, 
nor happy. We used to think justice was before thrift, 
and nobleness better than happiness. I place no great 
reliance on that prudent patriotism which is the child of 
interest. The Tribune, unusually frank, pre-eminently 
honorable and lofty as has been its tone of late, still 
says, " Be it the business of the people everywhere to 
forget the negro, and remember only the country." 
[Applause.] 

After drifting, a dreary night of thirty years, before the 
hurricane, our ship of state is going to pieces on the lee 
shore of slavery. Every one confesses that the poison of 
our body politic is slavery. European critics, in view of 
it, have pronounced the existence of the Union hitherto a 
" fortunate accident." Orators floated into fame on one 
inspired phrase, " irrepressible conflict." Jefferson died 
foreseeing that this was the rock on which we should split. 
Even Mr. Webster, speaking with bated breath, in the 
cold chill of 1850, still dared to be a statesman, and offered 
to meet the South on this question, suggesting a broad 
plan for the cure of our dread disease. But now, with 
the Union dropping asunder, with every brain and tongue 
active, we l^five yet to hear the first statesman-word, the 
first proposal to consider the fountain and origin of all our 
ills. We look in vain through Mr. Seward's speech for 
one hint or suggestion as to any method of dealing with 
our terrible hurt. Indeed, one of his terrors of disunion 
is, that it will give room for " an European, an uncompro- 
mising hostility to slavery." Such an hostility — the 
irrepressible conflict of right and wrong — William H. 
Seward, in 1861, pronounces " fearful " ! To describe 
the great conflict of the age, the first of American states- 
men, in the year of Garibaldi and Italy, can find nc 
epithet but " fearful." 



DISUNION. 347 

The servile silence of the 7th of March, 1850, is out- 
done, and to New York Massachusetts yields the post of 
infamy which her great Senator has hitherto filled. Yes, 
of all the doctors bending over the patient, not one dares 
to name his disease, except the Tribune, which advises 
him to foriiet it ! Throuo;hout half of the G;reat cities of 
the North, every one who touches on it is mobbed into 
silence ! This is, indeed, the saddest feature of our times. 

Let us, then, who, unlike Mr. Seward, are not afraid to 
tell, even now, all and just what we wish, — let us look at 
the real nature of the crisis in which we stand. The 
Tribune says we should " forget the negro." It seems to 
me that all our past, all our present, and all our future 
command us at this moment to think of nothing but the 
negro. [Slight laughter derisively.] 

Let me tell you why. Mr. Seward says, " The first 
object of every human society is safety " ; I think the first 
duty of society is justice. Alexander Hamilton said, 
" Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil 
society." If any other basis of safety or gain were honest, 
it would be impossible. "A prosperous iniquity," says 
Jeremy Taylor, " is the most unprofitable condition in the 
world." The nation which, in moments when great moral 
questions disturb its peace, consults first for its own safety^ 
is atheist and coward, and there are three chances out of 
four that it will end by being knave. We were not sent 
into the world to plant cities, to make Unions or save 
them. Seeing that all men are born equal, our first civil 
duty is to see that our laws treat them so. The convul- 
sion of this hour is the effort of the nation to do this, its 
duty, while politicians and parties strive to balk it of its 
purpose. The nation agonizes this hour to recognize man 
as man, forgetting color, condition, sex, and creed. 

Our Revolution earned us only independence. What- 
ever our fathers meant, the chief lesson of that hour was 



348 ^^^ DISUNION. 

that America belongs to Americans. That generation 
learned it thoroughly; the second inherited it as a preju- 
dice ; we, the third, have our bonos and blood made of it. 
When thought passes through purpose into character, it 
becomes the unchangeable basis of national life. That 
Revolutionary lesson need never be learned again, and 
will never die out. Let a British fleet, with admirals of 
the blue and red, cover our Atlantic coast, and in ten 
days Massachusetts and Carolina will stand shoulder to 
shoulder ; the only rivalry, who shall die nearest the foe. 
[Loud applause, with cries of " Good."] 

That principle is all our Revolution directly taught us. 
Massachusetts was hide-bound in the aristocracy of classes 
for years after. The bar and the orthodox pulpit were our 
House of Lords. A Baptist clergyman was little better 
than a negro. The five points of Massachusetts decency 
were, to trace your lineage to the Mayflower, graduate at 
Harvard College, be a good lawyer or a member of an 
orthodox church, — either would answer [laughter], — pay 
your debts, and frighten your child to sleep by saying 
" Thomas Jefferson." Our theological aristocracy went 
down before the stalwart blows of Baptist, Unitarian, and 
Freethinker, — before Channing and Abner Kneeland. 
Virginia slaveholders, making theoretical democracy their 
passion, conquered the Federal Government, and emanci- 
pated the working-classes of New England. Bitter was 
the cup to honest Federalism and the Essex Junto. To- 
day, Massachusetts only holds to the lips of Carolina a 
beaker of the same beverage I know no man who has 
analyzed this passage in our history so well as Richard 
Hildreth. The last thirty years have been the flowering 
out of this lesson. The Democratic principle, crumbling 
classes into men, has been working down from pulpits and 
judges' seats, through shop-boards and shoe-benches, to 
Irish hodmen, and reached the negro at last. The long 



DISUNION. 349 

toil of a century cries out, Eureha ! — "I have found it ! " 
— the diamond of an immortal soul and an equal manhood 
under a black skin as truly as under a Avhite one. For 
this, Leggett labored and Lovejoy died. For this, the 
bravest soul of tlie century went up to God from a Vir- 
ginia scaffold. [Hisses and applause.] For this, young 
men gave up their May of youth, and old men the honors 
and ease of ao-e. It went throlio-h the land writino; his 
tory afresh, setting up and pulling down parties, riving 
sects, mowing down colossal reputations, making us veil 
our faces in shame at the baseness of our youth's idols, 
sending bankrupt statesmen to dishonored graves. 

We stand to-day just as Hancock and Adams and Jef- 
ferson stood when stamp-act and tea-tax, Patrick Henry's 
eloquence and the massacre of March 5th, Otis's blood 
and Bunker Hill, had borne them to July, 1776. Suppose 
at that moment John Adams had cried out, " Now let the 
people everywhere forget Independence, and remember 
only ' God save the King ' ! " [Laughter.] The toil of 
a whole generation — thirty years — has been spent in ex- 
amining this question of the rights and place of the negro ; 
the whole earnest thought of the nation given to it ; old 
parties have been wrecked against it, new ones grown out 
of it ; it stifles all other questions ; the great interests of 
the nation necessarily suffer, men refusing to think of any- 
thing else but this ; it struggles up through all compro- 
mises, asserting its right to be heard ; no green withes of 
eloquence or cunning, trade, pulpit. Congress, or college, 
succeed in binding this Samson ; the business of the sea- 
board begs it may be settled, no matter how ; the Avhole 
South is determined to have it met, proclaiming that she 
does not secede because of personal liberty laws or a Re- 
publican President, but because of the state of NortJiern 
feeling of which these are signs. It is not Northern laws 
or officers they fear, but Northern conscience. Why, then. 



350 ^^^ DISUNION. 

should not the North accept the issue, and try to settle the 
question forever ? You ma}^ run the Missom^i line to the 
Pacific, but Garrison still lives ; and while he does. South 
Carohna hates and fears Massachusetts. [Applause.] No 
Congressional resolves can still our brains or stifle oui 
hearts ; till you do, the slaveholder feels that New Eng- 
land is his natural foe. There can therefore be no real 
peace till we settle the slave question. If thirty years 
of debate have not fitted us to meet it, when shall we 
be able ? 

But the most honest Republicans say a State has no 
rio-ht to secede ; we wdll show first that we have a qov- 
ernment, and then, not before, settle disputed questions. 
Suppose a State has no right to secede, of what conse- 
quence is that ? A Union is made up of willing States, 
not of conquered provinces. There are some rights, quite 
perfect, yet wliolly incapable of being enforced. A hus- 
band or wife who can only keep the other partner within 
the bond by locking the doors and standing armed before 
them, had better submit to peaceable separation. [Ap- 
plause.] A firm Avliere one partner refuses to act has a 
full right to his services, but how compel them ? South 
Carolina may be punished for her fault in going out of the 
Union, but that does not keep her in it. Why not rec- 
ognize soberly the nature and necessity of our position ? 
Why not, like statesmen, remember that homogeneous 
nations like France tend to centralization ; confederacies 
like ours tend inevitably to dismemberment ? France is 
the slow, still deposit of ages on central granite ; only the 
globe's convulsion can rive it ! We are the rich mud of 
the Mississippi ; every flood shifts it from one side to the 
other of the channel. Nations like Austria, victim states, 
held under the lock and key of despotism, — or like our- 
selves, a herd of States, hunting for their food together, — 
must expect that any quarrel may lead to disunion. Be- 



DISUNION. 351 

Side, Inter arma^ silent leges, — armies care nothing for 
constables. Tliis is not a case at law, but revolution. 

Let us not, however, too anxiously grieve over the 
Union of 1787. Real Unions are not made, they grow. 
This was made, like an artificial waterfall or a Connecticut 
nutmeg. It was not an oak which to-day a tempest shat- 
ters. It was a wall hastily built, in hard times, of round 
boulders ; the cement has crumbled, and the smooth 
stones, obeying the law of gravity, tumble here and there. 
Why should we seek to stop them, merely to show that 
we have a right and can ? That were only a waste of 
means and temper. Let us build, like the Pyramids, a 
fabric which every natural law guarantees ; or, better still, 
plant a Union whose life survives the ages, and quietly 
gives birth to its successor. 

Mr. Seward's last speech, which he confesses does not 
express his real convictions, denies every principle but one 
that he proclaimed In his campaign addresses ; that one — 
which, at Lansing, he expressly said " he was ashamed to 
confess " — that one is this : Everything is to be sacrificed 
to save the Union. I am not aware that, on any public 
occasion, varied and wide as have been his discussions and 
topics, he has ever named the truth or the virtue which he 
would not sacrifice to save the Union. For thirty years, 
there has been stormy and searching discussion of profound 
moral questions ; one, whom his friends call our only states- 
man, has spoken often on all ; yet he has never named the 
sin which he does not think would be a virtue, if it con- 
tributed to save the Union. 

Remembering this element of his statesmanship, let us 
listen to the key-note of his late speech : " The first ob- 
ject of every human society is safety or security, for 
which, if need be, they will and they must sacrifice every 
other." 

I will not stop to say that, even with his explanation, 



352 DISUNION. 

his principle is equivocal, and, if unlimited, false ; that, 
unqualified, it justifies every crime, and would have pre- 
vented every glory of history ; that by it, James II. and 
Bonaparte were saints ; under one sense, the Pilgrims 
were madmen, and under another, the Puritans did right 
to hang Quakers. But grant it. Suppose the Union 
means weaUh, culture, happiness, and safety, man has no 
right to buy either by crime. 

Many years ago, on the floor of Congress, Kentucky 
and Tennessee both confessed that " the dissolution of the 
Union was the dissolution of slavery." Last month. Sen- 
ator Johnson of Tennessee said : "If I were an Abolition- 
ist, and wanted to accomplish the abolition of slavery in 
the Southern States, the first step I would take would be 
to bre^k the bonds of this Union. I believe the continu- 
ance of slavery depends on the preservation of this Union, 
and a compliance with all tlie guaranties of the Constitu- 
tion." In September last (at La Crosse), Mr. Seward 
himself said, " What are they [the Southern States] in for 
but to have slavery saved for them by the Federal Union ? 
Why would they go out, for they could not maintain and 
defend themselves ao-ainst their own slaves ? " In this 
last speech, he tells us it is the Union which restricts the 
opposition to slavery within narrow limits, and prevents it 
from being, like that of Europe, a " direct and uncompro- 
mising" demand for abohtion. 

Now, if the Union created for us a fresh Golconda every 
month, if it made every citizen wise as Solomon, blameless 
as St. John, and safe as an angel in the courts of Heaven, 
to cling to it would still be a damnable crime, hateful to 
God, while its cement w^as the blood of the negro, — wliile 
it, and it alone, made the crime of slaveholding possible in 
fifteen States. 

Mr. Seward is a power in the state. It is worth while 
to understand his course. It cannot be caprice. His 



DISUNION. 35B 

position decides that of millions. The instinct which leads 
him to take it shows his guess (and he rarely errs) what 
the majority intend. I reconcile thus the utter difference 
and opposition of his campaign speeches, and his last one. 
I think lie went West, sore at the loss of the nomination, 
but with too much good sense, perhaps magnanimity, to 
act over again Webster's sullen part when Taylor stole 
his rights. 

Still, Mr. Se^vard, though philosophic, though keen to 
analyze and unfold the theory of our politics, is not cun- 
ning in plans. He is only the hand and tongue ; his brain 
lives in private hfe on the Hudson River side. Acting 
under that guidance, he thought Mr. Lincoln not likely to 
go beyond, even if he were able to keep, the whole Chi- 
cago platform. Accordingly, he said: "I will give free 
rein to my natural feelings and real convictions, till these 
Abolitionists of the Republican ranks shall cry, ' O what a 
mistake ! We ought to have nominated Seward ; another 
time w^e will not be balked.' " Hence the hot eloquence 
and fearless tone of those prairie speeches. He returns to 
Washington, finds Mr. Lincoln sturdily insisting that his 
honor is pledged to keep in office every promise made in 
the platform. Then Mr. Seward shifts his course, saying : 
" Since my abolitionism cannot take the wind from my 
rival's sails, I '11 get credit as a Conservative. Accepting 
the premiership, I will forestall pubhc opinion, and do all 
possible to bind the coming administration to a policy 
which I originate." He offers to postpone the whole Chi- 
cago platform, in order to save the Union, — though last 
October, at Chicago, he told us postponement never settles 
anything, whether it is a lawsuit or a national question ; 
better be beat and try again than postpone. 

This speech of Mr. Seward I regard as a declaration of 
war against the avowed policy of the incoming President. 
If Lincoln were an Andrew Jackson, as his friends aver, 

23 



854 DISUNION. 

he would dismiss Mr. Seward from liis Cabinet. The in- 
coming administration, if honest and firm, has two enemies 
to fight, — Mr. Seward and the South. 

His power is large. Already he has swept our Adams 
into the vortex, making him offer to sacrifice the whole 
RepubHcan platform, though, as events have turned, he 
has sacrificed only his own personal honor. Fifteen years 
ago, John Quincy Adams propliesied that the Union would 
not last twenty years. He little thought tliat disunion, 
when it came, would swallow his son's honor in its gulf.* 

At such hours, New England Senators and Representa- 
tives have, from the very idea of their ultraism, little or no 
direct Aveio-ht in Cono-ress. But while New Eno;land is 
the brain of the Union, and therefore foreshadows what 
will be public opinion in the ])lastic West five years 
hence, it is of momentous consequence that the people 
here should make their real feelings known ; that the 
pulpit and press should sound the bugle-note of utter de- 
fiance to slavery itself, — Union or no Union, Constitution 
or no Constitution, freedom for every man between the 
oceans, and from the hot Gulf to the frozen pole ! You 
may as well dam up Niagara with bulrushes as bind our 
antislavery purpose with Congressional compromise. The 
South knows it. While she holds out her hand for Sew- 
ard's offer, she keeps her eye fixed on us, to see what we 
think. Let her see that we laugh it to scorn. Sacrifice 
anything to keep the slaveholding States in the Union ? 
God forbid ! we will rather build a bridge of gold, and 
pay their toll over it, — accompany them out with glad 
noise of trumpets, and " speed the parting guest.'* Let 
them not " stand on the order of their going, but go at 
once " ! Let them take the forts, empty our arsenals and 

* Since this was said, Mr. Adams has had his reward, — winning high 
oflBce by treachery to liis party, as his father did before, and as liis grand- 
father tried to do and failed. 



DISUNION. ' 355 

sub-treasuries, and we will lend them, beside, jewels of 
gold and jewels of silver, and Egypt be glad when they 
are departed. [Laughter and applause.] 

But let the world distinctly understand why they go, — 
to save slavery ; and why we rejoice in their departure, — 
because we knovv^ their declaration of independence is the 
jubilee of the slave. The eyes of the world are fixed on 
us as the great example of self-government. When this 
Union goes to pieces, it is a shock to the hopes of the 
struggling millions of Europe. All lies bear bitter fruit. 
To-day is the inevitable fruit of our fathers' faithless com- 
promise in 1787. For the sake of the future, in freedom's 
name, let thinking Europe understand clearly why we 
sever. They saw Mr. Seward paint, at Chicago, our 
utter demoralization, Church and State, government and 
people, all classes, educated and uneducated, — all brought 
by the Slave Power, he said, to think slavery a blessing, 
and do anything to save it. So utter did he consider this 
demoralization, that he despaired of native Americans, and 
trusted to the hunted patriots and the refuse of Europe, 
which the emigrant-trains bore by his house, for the salva- 
tion of the valley of the Mississippi. To-day, they see that 
very man kneeling to that Slave Power, and begging her 
to take all, but only consent to grant him such a Union, 
— Union with such a power ! How, then, shall Kossuth 
answer, when Austria lauglis him to scorn ? Shall Eu- 
rope see the slaveholder kick the reluctant and kneeling 
North out of such a Union ? How, then, shall Gari- 
baldi dare look in the face of Napoleon ? If, therefore, 
it were only to honor self-government, to prove that it 
educates men, not pedlers and cowards, let us proclaim 
our faith that honest labor can stand alone ; its own riglit 
hand amply able to earn its bread and defend its rights 
[applause] ; and, if it were not so, our readiness at any 
cost to welcome disunion when it comes brinmng freedom 



356 DISUNION. 

to four million of hapless slaves ! [Applause.] What a 
sad comment on free institutions, that they have produced 
a South of tyrants, and a North of cowards; a South, 
ready to face any peril to save slavery, and a North un- 
willincp to risk a dollar to serve freedom ? 

Why do I set so little value on the Union ? Because 
I consider it a failure ; certainly, so far as slavery is con- 
cerned, it is a failure. If you doubt me, look at the pic- 
ture of its effects which Mr. Seward painted at Chicago. 

Look at our history. Under it, 700,000 slaves have 
increased to 4,000,000. We have paid 8 800,000,000 
directly to the support of slavery. This secession will 
cost the Union and business $200,000,000 more. The 
loss which this disturbing force has brought to our trade 
and industry, within sixty years, it would be safe to call 
$ 500,000,000. Is the Union a pecuniary success ? Un- 
der it. Slavery has been strong enough to rule the nation 
for sixty years, and now breaks it to pieces because she 
can rule no longer. Under it, public morals have been so 
lowered, that while, at its outset, nine men out of ten were 
proud to be called Abolitionists, now nine out of ten 
would deem it not only an insult, but a pecuniary injury, 
to be charged with being so. Ever since it existed, its 
friends have confessed that, to save the Union, it was 
necessary and proper to crush free speech. Witness John 
A-dams's sedition laws. Witness mobs of well-dressed 
aierchants in every Northern city now. Witness one 
lalf of the Republican party lamenting free speech, this 
hour, throughout the North. 

Mr. Seward confessed, at Chicago, that neither free 
speech nor free suffrage existed in one half of the States. 
No Northern man can trade, live, or talk there. For 
twenty years, men have been mobbed, robbed, lynched, 
Imng, and burned there, solely for loving liberty ; and 
while the Federal Government never lifted a finger to 



DISUNION. 357 

prevent or punish it, the very States whose citizens have 
been outrao-ed have been too indiiferent even to remon- 
strate. Massachusetts, who once remonstrated, saw her 
own ao-ent mobbed out of Charleston with her full con- 

o 

sent. 

Before the Union existed, Washington and Jefferson 
uttered the boldest antislavery opinions ; to-day they 
would be lynched in their own homes ; and their senti- 
ments have been mobbed this very year in every great 
city of the North. The Fugitive Slave Bill could never 
have been passed nor executed in the days of Jay. Now 
no man who hopes for office dares to insist that it is un- 
constitutional. Slavery has turned our churches of Christ 
to churches of commerce. 

John Quincy Adams, the child of our earlier civilization, 
said the Union was worthless, weighed against that liberty 
it was meant to secure. Mr. Seward, the child of the 
Union, says there are few men, and there ought to be few, 
who would not prefer saving, the Union to securing free- 
dom ; and standing to-day at the head of nineteen millions 
of freemen, he confesses he does not deem it prudent to 
express his "most cherished convictions" on this subject,* 
while every honest man fears, and three fourths of Mr. 
Seward's followers hope, that the North, in this conflict of 
right and wrong, will, spite of Horace Greeley's warning, 
"Love liberty less than profit, dethrone conscience, and 
set up commerce in its stead." You know it. A Union 

* Mr. Seward said, at St. Paul, last September : " I do not believe there 
has been one day, since 1787, until now, when slavery had any power in this 
government, except what it derived from buying up men of weak virtue, no 
principle, and great cupidity, and terrifying men of weak nerve, in the Free 

States Fellow-citizens, either in one way or the other, whether you 

agree with me in attributing it to the mterposition of Divine Providence or 
not, this battle has been fought, this victory has been won. Slavery to-day 
is, for the first time, not only powerless, but without influence in the Ameri- 
can republic For the first time in the history of the republic, the 



358 DISUNION. 

whose despotism is so cruel and searching that one half 
our lawyers and one half our mercljants stifle conscience 
for bread, — in the name of Martin Luther and John Mil- 
ton, of Algernon Sidney and Henry Vane, of John Jay 
and Samuel Adams, I declare such a Union a failure. 

It is for the chance of saving such a Union that Mr. 
Seward and Mr. Adams break in Washington all the 
promises of the canvass, and countenance measures which 
stifle the conscience and confuse the moral sense of the 
North. Say not that my criticism is harsh. I know 
their pretence. It is, we must concihate, compromise, 
postpone, practise finesse, make promises or break them, 
do anything, to gain time and concentrate the North 
against slavery. Our fathers tried that policy in 1787. 
That they miserably failed is proved by a Capitol filled 
with knaves and traitors, yet able to awe and ruin honest 
men. It was tried in 1821, and failed. It was tried in 
1850, and failed. Who is audacious enough to ask an- 
other trial ? The Republicans say : " Conciliate, use soft 
language, organize — behind the door — bands of volun- 
teers ; and when we have saved Washington, we may 
dare speak out." That is good policy for midnight con- 
spirators. But if we are a government, if we are a nation, 
we should say : " Tell the truth ! If coercion is our pol- 
icy, tell the truth. Call for volunteers in every State, 
and vindicate the honor of the nation in the light of the 
sun ! " [Applause.] 

Slave Power has not even the power to terrify or alarm the freeman so as 
to make him submit, and scheme, and coincide, and compromise. It rails 
now with a feeble voice, as it thundered in our cars for twenty or thirty years 
past. With a feeble and muttering voice, they cry out that they will tear the 
Union to pieces. "Who 's afraid 1 They complain that, if we will not sur- 
render our principles, and our system, and our right — being a majority — 
to rule, and if we will not accept their system and such rules as they wilJ 
give us, they will go out of the Union. Who 's afraid ? Nobody 's afiaid 
nobody can be bought." (Yet now Mr. Seward himself trembles !) 



DISUNION. 359 

The cunning which equivocates to-day, in order to se- 
cure a peaceful inauguration on the 4th of March, will 
yield up all its principles before the 1st of July. Beside, 
when opiate speeches have dulled the Northern conscience, 
and kneeling speeches have let down its courage, who can 
be sure that even Seward's voice, if he retain the wish, 
can conjure up again such a North as stands face to face 
with Southern arrogance to-day ? 

The Union, then, is a failure. What harm can come 
from disunion, and what good ? 

The seceding States will form a Southern Confederacy. 
"We may judge of its future from the history of Mexico. 
The Gulf States intend to reopen the slave-trade. If 
Kentucky and Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and North 
Carolina secede, the opening of that trade will ruin them, 
and they will gravitate to us, free. Louisiana cannot 
secede, except on paper ; the omnipotent West needs her 
territory, as the mouth of its river. She must stay with 
us as a State or a conquered province, and may have her 
choice. [Laughter.] Beside, she stands on sugar, and 
free-trade bankrupts her. Consider the rest of the Slave 
States as one power, how can it harm us ? Let us see 
the ground of Mr. Seward's fears. Will it increase our 
expenses or lessen our receipts ? No ; every one of those 
States costs the Union more than it contributes to it. 
Can it harm us by attacks ? States without commerce or 
manufactures, and with an army of four millions of natural 
enemies encamped among them, have given bonds to keep 
the peace. Will they leave us so small and weak by going 
that we cannot stand alone ? Let us see. There is no 
reason to suppose that the Free States, except California, 
will not clino; too-ether. Idem velle. idem nolle, — to like 
and dislike the same things, says the Latin proverb, is 
friendship. When a great number of persons agree in a 
great number of things, that insures a union ; that is not 



360 ^^ISUNION. 

the case with the North and South, therefore we separate ; 
that is the case with the whole North, therefore we shall 
remain united. How strong shall We be ? Our territory 
will be twice as large as Austria, three times as large as 
France, four times as large as Spain, six times as large as 
Italy, seven times as large as Great Britain. Those na- 
tions have proved, for a considerable period, that they had 
sufficient land to stand on. Our population will be about 
nineteen millions, — more than the Union had In 1840." I 
do not think we were much afraid of anybody in 1840. 
Our blood is largely Yankee, a race that saved Carolina 
from her own Tories, in the Kevolution. [Laughter.] 
Without that hinderance, we could fight now, certainly, as 
well as we did then ; and then, with three million men 
only, we measured swords with the ablest nation of Eu- 
rope, and conquered. I think, therefore, we have no 
reason to be very nervously anxious now. Indeed, Mr. 
Seward's picture of the desolation and military weakness 
of the divided States, if intended for the North, is the 
emptiest lie in his speech. I said lie ; I meant it. I will 
tell you why. Because one William H. Seward said, last 
fall, at Lansing : ••' We are maintaining a standing army at 
the heavy cost of one thousand dollars per man, and a 
standing navy, — for what ? to protect Michigan or Massa- 
chusetts, New York or Ohio ? No ; there is not a nation 
on the face of the earth which would dare to attach these Free 
States, or any of them, if they were even disunited. We 
are doing it in order that slaves may not escape from Slave 
States into the Free, and to secure those States from 
domestic insurrection ; and because, if we provoke a for- 
eign foe, slavery cries out that it is in danger." Surely 
the speaker of those words has no right to deny that our 
expenses and danger will be less, and our power to meet 
both greater, when the Slave States are gone. 

Indeed, everybody knows this. And this trembling 



DISUNION. 361 

dread of losing the Union, which so frightens the people 
that, in view of it, Mr. Seward, as a practical man, dares 
not now tell, as he says, what he really thinks and wishes, 
is the child of his and Webster's insincere idolatry of the 
Union. To serve party and personal ambition, they made 
a god of the Union ; and to-day their invention returns to 
plague the inventors. They made the people slaves to a 
falsehood ; and that same deluded people have turned 
their fetters into gags for Mr. Seward's lips. Thank God 
for the retribution ! 

But the Union created commerce ; disunion will kill it. 

The Union the mother of commerce ? I doubt it. I 
question whether the genius and energy of the Yankee 
race are not the parent of commerce and the fountain of 
wealth, much more than the Union. That race, in Hol- 
land, first created a country, and then, standing on piles, 
called modern commerce into being. That race, in Eng- 
land, with territory just wide enough to keep its eastern 
and western harbors apart, monopolized, for centuries, the 
trade of the world, and annexed continents only as coffers 
wherein to garner its wealth. Who shall say that the 
same blood, with only New England for its anchorage, 
could not drag the wealth of the West into its harbors ? 
Who shall say that the fertile lands of Virginia and the 
Mississippi enrich us because they will to do so, and not 
because they are compelled ? As long as New England 
is made of granite, and the nerves of her sons of steel, 
she will be, as she always has been, the brain of North 
America, united or disunited ; and harnessing the ele- 
ments, steam and lightning, to her car of conquest, she 
will double the worth of every prairie acre by her skill, 
cover ocean with her canvas, and gather the wealth of the 
Western hemisphere into her harbors. 

Despite, then, of Seward's foreboding, our confederacy 
will be strong, safe, and rich. Honest it will be, and 



862 DISUNION. 

therefore happy. Its nobleness will be, that, laughing at 
prophets, and scorning chances, it has taken the prop from 
the slave system, and in one night the whole fabric will 
tumble to pieces. Disunion is abolition ! That is all the 
value disunion has for me. I care little for forms of ffov- 
ernment or extent of territory ; whether ten States or 
thirty make up the Union. No foreign state dare touch 
us, united or disunited. It matters not to me whether 
Massachusetts is worth one thousand millions, as now, or 
two thousand millions, as she might be, if she had no 
Carolina to feed, protect, and carry the mails for. The 
music of disunion to me is, that at its touch the slave 
breaks into voice, shouting his jubilee. 

What supports slavery ? Northern bayonets, calming 
the masters' fears. Mr. Seward's words, which I have 
just quoted, tell you what he thinks the sole use of our 
army and navy. Disunion leaves God's natural laws to 
work their good results. God gives every animal means 
of self-protection. Under God's law, insurrection is the 
tyrant's check. Let us stand out of the path, and allow 
the Divine law to have free course. 

Next, Northern opinion is the opiate of Southern con- 
science. Disunion changes that. Public opinion forms 
governments, and again governments react to mould oj^in- 
ion. Here is a government just as much permeated by 
slavery as China or Japan is with idolatry. 

The Republican party take possession of this govern- 
ment. How are they to undermine the Slave Power? 
That power is composed, 1st, of the inevitable influence 
of wealth, 12,000,000,000, — the worth of the slaves in 
the Union, — so much capital drawing to it the sympathy 
of all other capital ; 2d, of the artificial aristocracy created 
by the three-fifths slave basis of the Constitution ; 3d, by 
the potent and baleful prejudice of color. 

The aristocracy of the Constitution ! Where have you 



DISUNION. 363 

seen an aristocracy with half its power ? You may take a 
small town here in New England, with a busy, active 
population of 2,500, and three or four such men as Gov- 
ernor Aikin, of South Carolina, riding leisurely to the 
polls, and throwing in their visiting-cards for ballots, will 
blot out the entire influence of that New England town in 
the Federal Government. That is your Republicanism ! 
Then, when you add to that the element of prejudice, 
which is concentrated in the epithet that spells negro with 
two " gg's," you make the three-strand cable of the Slave 
Power, — the prejudice of race, the onmipotence of money, 
and the almost irresistible power of aristocracy. That is 
the Slave Power. 

How is Mr. Lincoln to undermine it while in the 
Union ? Certainly, by turning every atom of patronage 
and pecuniary profit in the keeping of the Federal Gov- 
ernment to the support of freedom. You know the con- 
trary policy has been always acted upon ever since Wash- 
ington, and been openly avowed ever since Fillmore. No 
man was to receive any office who was not sound on the 
slavery question. You remember the debate in the Sen- 
ate, when that was distinctly avowed to be the policy of 
Mr. Fillmore. You remember Mr. Clay letting it drop 
out accidentally, in debate, that the slaveholders had 
always closely watched the Cabinet, and kept a majority 
there, in order to preserve the ascendency of slavery. 
This is the policy which, in the course of fifty years, has 
built up the Slave Power. Now, how is the Republican 
party eVer to beat that power down ? By reversing that 
policy, in favor of freedom. Cassius Clay said to me, five 
years ago : '' If you will allow me to have the patronage 
of this government five years, and exercise it remorse- 
lessly, down to New Orleans ; never permit any one but 
an avowed Abolitionist to hold office under the Federal 
Government, I will revolutionize the Slave States them- 



364 ^^^isuNiON, 



selves in two administrations." That is a sclieme of effi- 
cient politics. But the Republican party lias never yet 
professed any such policy. 

Mr. Greeley, on the contrary, avowed, in the Tribune, 
that he had often voted for a slaveholder willingly, and he 
never expected the time would come when he sliould lay 
down the principle of refusing to vote for a slaveholder to 
office ; and that sentiment has not only been reiterated 
by others of the Republican party, but has never been 
disavowed by any one. But suppose you could develop 
politics up to this idea, that the whole patronage of the 
government should be turned in favor of abolition ; it 
would take two or three generations to overthrow what 
the Slave Power has done in sixty years, with the strength 
of aristocracy and the strength of prejudice on its side. 
With only the patronage of the government in its control, 
the Republican party must work slowly to regenerate the 
government against those two elements in opposition, 
when, with them in its favor, the Slave Power has been 
some sixty years in bringing about such a result as we see 
around us. To reverse this, and work only with the 
patronage of the government, it would take you long to 
effiict the cure. In my soul, I believe that a dissolution 
of the Union, sure to result speedily in the abolition of 
slavery, would be a lesser evil than the slow, faltering, 
diseased, gradual dying-out of slavery, constantly poison- 
ing us with the festering remains of this corrupt political, 
social, and literary state. I believe a sudden, conclusive, 
dehnite disunion, resulting in the abolition of slavery, in 
the disruption of the Northern mind from all connection 
with it, all vassalage to it, immediately^ would be a better, 
healthier, and more wholesome cure, than to let the Re- 
publican party exert this gradual influence through the 
power of the government for thirty or sixty years. 

We are seeking the best way to get rid of a great 



DISUNION. 865 

national evil. Mr. Seward's way is to take the Union 
as a " fixed fact," and then educate politics up to a certain 
level. In that way we have to hve, like Sinbad, with 
Gushing; and Hillard and Hallett and O'Connor and 
Douglas, and men hke them, on our shoulders, for the 
next thirty or forty years ; with the Deweys and Presi- 
dent Lords, and all that class of men, — and all this timid 
servility of the press, all this lack of virtue and manhood, 
all this corruption of the pulpit, all this fossil hunkerism, 
all this selling of the soul for a mess of pottage, is to 
linger, working in the body politic for thirty or forty 
years, and we are gradually to eliminate the disease ! 
What an awful future ! What a miserable chronic dis- 
ease ! What a wreck of a noble nation the American 
Republic is to be for fifty years ! 

And why ? Only to save a piece of parchment that El- 
bridge Gerry had instinct enough to think did not deserve 
saving, as long ago as 1789 ! Mr. Seward would leave 
New York united to New Orleans, with the hope (sure to 
be balked) of getting freer and freer from year to year. I 
want to place her, at once, in the same relation towards 
New Orleans that she bears to Liverpool. You can do it, 
the moment you break the political tie. What will that 
do ? I will tell you. The New York pulpit is to-day one 
end of a magnetic telegraph, of which the New Orleans 
cotton-market is the other. The New York stock-market 
is one end of the magnetic telegraph, and the Gharleston 
Mercury is the other. New York statesmanship ! Why, 
even in the lips of Seward, it is sealed, or half sealed, by 
considerations which take their rise in the canebrakes and 
cotton-fields of fifteen States. Break up this Union, and 
the ideas of South Garolina will have no more influence 
on Seward than those of Palmerston. The wishes of 
New Orleans would have no more influence on Ghief 
Justice Bigelow than the wishes of London. The threats 



366 ^>wsuNioN. 

of Davis, Toombs, and Keitt will have no more influence 
on the Tribune than the thunders of the London Times 
or the hopes of the Chartists. Onr Bancrofts will no 
longer write history with one eye fixed on Democratic 
success, nor our Websters invent " laws of God " to 
please Mr. Senator Douglas. We shall have as close 
connection, as much commerce ; we shall still have a com- 
mon language, a common faith, and common race, the 
same common social life ; we shall intermarry just the 
same ; we shall have steamers running just as often and 
just as rapidly as now. But what cares Dr. Dewey for 
the opinion of Liverpool ? Nothing ! What cares he for 
the opinion of Washington ? Everything ! Break the 
link, and New York springs up like the fountain relieved 
from a mountain load, and assumes her place among de- 
cent cities. I mean no special praise of the English courts, 
pulpit, or press by these comparisons ; my only wish is to 
show that, however close the commercial relations might 
continue to be between North and South, and in spite of 
that common faith and common tongue and common his- 
tory, which would continue to hold these thirty States to- 
gether, still, as in the case of this country and England, 
wedded still by those ties, the mere sundering of a political 
union would leave each half free, as the disunion of 1776 
did, from a large share of the corrupt Influence of the other. 
That is what I mean by disunion. I mean to take Mas- 
sachusetts, and leave her exactly as she is, commercially. 
She shall manufacture for the South just as Lancashire 
does. I know what an influence the South has on the 
manufacturers and clergy of England; — that is inevitable, 
in the nature of things. We have only human nature to 
work with, and we cannot raise it up to the level of angels. 
We shall never get beyond the sphere of human selfish- 
ness, but we can lift this human nature up to a higher 
level, if we can but remove the weight of that political 



DISUNION. 367 

relation which now rests upon it. What 1 would do with 
Massachusetts is tliis : I would make her, in relation to 
South Carolina, just what England is. I would that I 
could float her off, and anchor her in mid-ocean I 

Severed from us, South Carolina must have a govern- 
ment. You see now a reign of terror, — threats to raise 
means. That can only last a day. Some system must 
give support to a government. It is an expensive luxury. 
You must lay taxes to support it. Where will you levy 
your taxes ? They must rest on productions. Produc- 
tions are the result of skilled labor. You must educate 
your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on 
a government. Despotisms are cheap ; free governments 
are a dear luxury, — the machinery is complicated and 
expensive. If the South wants a theoretical republic, she 
must pay for it, — she must have a basis for taxation. 
How will she pay for it ? Why, Massachusetts, with a 
million workmen, — men, women, and children, — the 
little feet that can just toddle bringing chips from the 
wood-pile, — Massachusetts only pays her own board and 
lodging, and lays by about four per cent a year. And South 
Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half slaves, — 
a slave doing only half the work of a freeman, — only one 
quarter of the population actually at work, — how much do 
you suppose she lays up ? Lays up a loss ! By all the 
laws of political economy, she lays up bankruptcy; of 
course she does ! Put her out, and let her see how shel- 
tered she has been from the laws of trade by the Union ! 
The free labor of the North pays her plantation patrol , 
we pay for her government, we pay for her postage, and 
for everything else. Launch her out, and let her see if 
she can make the year's ends meet ! And when she tries, 
she must educate her labor in order to get the basis foi 
taxation. Educate slaves ! Make a locomotive with its 
furnaces of open wire-work, fill them with anthracite coal, 



368 ^^i^isuNiON. 

and when you have raised it to white heat, mount and 
drive it through a powder-magazine, and you are safe, 
compared with a slaveholding community educating its 
slaves. But South CaroHna must do it, in order to get 
the basis for taxation to support an independent govern- 
ment. The moment she does it, she removes the safe- 
guard of slavery. What is the contest in Virginia now ? 
Between the men who want to make their slaves mechan- 
ics, for the increased wages it will secure, and tlie men 
who oppose, for fear of the influence it will have on the 
general security of slave property and white throats. Just 
that dispute will go on, wherever the Union is dissolved. 
Slavery comes to an end by the laws of trade. Hang up 
your Sharpe's rifle, my valorous friend ! The slave does 
not ask the help of your musket. He only says, like old 
Diogenes to Alexander, " Stand out of my light ! " Just 
take your awkward proportions, you Yankee Democrat 
and Republican, out of the light and heat of God's laws 
of political economy, and they will melt the slave's chains 
away ! 

Indeed, I much doubt whether the South can maintain 
her cotton culture at all, as a separate, slaveholding gov- 
ernment. Cotton is only an annual in the United States. 
In St. Domingo and the tropics it is a tree lasting from 
five to twenty years. Within the Union it is, then, 
strictly speaking, a forced product ; or at least it touches 
the highest northern belt of possible culture, only possible 
there under very favorable circumstances. We all know 
how hard and keen is the competition of this generation ; 
men clutching bread only by restless hands and brains. 
Expose now our cotton to the full competition of India, 
Africa, and the tropics ; burden it by taxes with the fall 
cost of a slaveholding government, necessarily an expen- 
sive one, — a tax it has never yet felt, having shirked 
it on to the North ; quicken other cotton-fields into 



DISUNION. 369 

greater activity by the unwillingness of France and Eng- 
land to trust their supply to States convulsed by political 
quarrels ; — and then see if, in such circumstances, the 
price of cotton in the markets of the world will not rule so 
low, that to raise it by slovenly slave-culture will not be 
utter loss, — so utter as to drive it wholly from our States, 
at least while they remain Slave States. 

Indeed, the Gulf States are essentially in a feudal con- 
dition, an aristocracy resting on slaves, — no middle class. 
To sustain government on the costly model of our age 
necessitates a middle class of trading, manufacturing en- 
ergy. The merchant of the nineteenth century spurns to 
be a subordinate. The introduction of such a class will 
create in the Gulf States that very irrepressible conflict 
which they leave us to avoid, — which, alive now in the 
Border States, makes these unwilling to secede, — which 
once created will soon undermine the aristocracy of the 
Gulf States and bring them back to us free. 

Take your distorted Union, your nightmare monster, 
out of the lio;ht and rano;e of these laws of trade and com- 
petition ; then, without any sacrifice on your part, slavery 
will go to pieces ! God made it a law of his universe, that 
villany should always be loss ; and if you will only not at- 
tempt, with your puny efforts, to stand betwixt the inevit- 
able laws of God's kingdom, as you are doing to-day, and 
have done for sixty years, by the vigor that the industry 
of sixteen States has been able to infuse into the sluggish 
veins of the South, slavery will drop to pieces by the very 
influence of the competition of the nineteenth century. 
That is what we mean by Disunion ! 

That is my coercion ! Northern pulpits cannonading the 
Southern conscience ; Northern competition emptying its 
pockets ; educated slaves awaking its fears ; civilization 
and Christianity beckoning the South into their sisterhood. 
Soon every breeze that sweeps over Carolina will bring to 

24 



370 ^^^DISUNION. 

our ears the rnnsic of repentance, and even she will carve 
on her Palmetto, " We hold this truth to be self-evident, 
— that all men are created equal." - 

All hail, then, Disunion ! " Beautiful on the mountains 
are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publish- 
eth peace, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth." The 
sods of Bunker Hill shall be greener, now that their great 
purpose is accomplished. Sleep in peace, martyr of Har- 
per's Ferry ! — your life was not given in vain. Rejoice, 
spirits of Fayette and Kosciusko ! — the only stain upon 
your swords is passing away. Soon, throughout all Amer- 
ica, there shall be neitlier power nor wish to hold a slave. 



PROGRESS.* 



" And Jacob said unto Pharaoli, The days of tlic years of my pilgrimage 
arc an luindrcd and thirty years : few and evil liave the days of tlic years of 
my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of 
my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." 

THUS spoke a prince who liad won from his elder 
brotlier both birthright and blessing ; who had seen 
*' the angels of God ascending and descending " ; was able 
to say, " With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and 
now I am become two bands " ; who had seen God face to 
face, and still lived ; to whom was pledged the Divine 
promise, " I will make of thee a great nation, in thy seed 
shall all the fiimilies of the earth be blessed" ; whose ears 
had just drunk in the glad tidings of his favorite son, 
*' Joseph is yet alive ; he is governor over all the land of 
Egypt." Thus timid and disconsolate gray hairs bewail 
their own times. To most men, the golden age is one 
long past. 

But Nature is ever growing. Science tells us every 
change is improvement. This globe, once a mass of 
molten granite, now blooms almost a paradise. So in 
man's life and history. One may not see it in his own 
short day. You must stand afar off to judge St. Peter's. 
The shadow on the dial seems motionless, but it touches 

* Address delivered before the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society in 
Music Hall, Boston, Sunday forenoon, February 17, 1861 : the mob, a? be- 
fore, filling many parts of the Hall and the avenues leading to it. 



372 ^"^^ PROGRESS. 

noon at last. Place the ages side by side, and see how 
they difter. Three quarters of the early kin2;s of France 
died poor and in prison, by the dagger or poison of their 
rivals. The Bonapartes stole large fortunes and half the 
thrones of Europe, yet all died natural deaths in their 
beds, and though discrowned, kept their enormous wealth. 

When the English marched from Boston to Concord, 
they fired into half the Whig dwellings they passed. 
When Lane crossed Kansas, pursuing Missouri ruffians, 
he sent men ahead to put a guard at every border-ruffian's 
door, to save inmate and goods from harm. When Gold- 
smith reminded England that " a heart buried in a dun- 
geon is as precious as that seated on a throne," there 
were one hundred and sixty-nine crimes punished with 
death. Now not only England, but every land governed 
by the English race, is marked by the mildness of its 
penal code, only one, two, or three classes of offenders 
being now murdered by law. 

It is not yet fifteen years since the first Woman's 
Rights Convention was held. The first call for one in 
Massachusetts, a dozen years ago, bore a name heard 
often in manful protest against popular sins, — that of 
Waldo Emerson. But in that short fifteen years, a dozen 
States have changed their laws. One New York statute, 
a year old, securing to married women control of their 
wages, will do more to save New York City from being 
grog-shop and brothel than a thousand pulpits could do. 
When Kansas went to Topeka to frame a Constitution, 
one third of the Convention were in favor of giving 
women the right to vote. Truly, the day breaks. If 
time served, I could find a score of familiar instances. It 
is enough to state the general principle, that civilization 
produces wants. Wants awaken intellect. To gratify 
them disciplines intellect. The keener the want, the 
lustier the growth. The power to use new truths in 



TROGRESS. 373 

science, new Ideas in morals or art, obliterates rank, and 
makes the lowest man useful or necessary to the state. 
Popes and kings no longer mark the ages ; but Luther 
and Raphael, Fulton and Faust, Howard and Rousseau. 
A Massachusetts mechanic, Eli Wliitney, made cotton 
king; a Massacluisetts printer, William Lloyd Garrison, 
has undermined its throne. Thus civilization insures 
equality. Types are the fathers of democrats. 

It is not always, however, ideas or moral principles that 
push tlie world forward. Selfish interests play a large 
part in the work. Our Revolution of 1776 succeeded be- 
cause trade and wealth joined hands with principle and 
enthusiasm, — a union rare in the history of revolutions. 
Northern merchants fretted at England's refusal to allow 
them direct trade with Holland and the West Indies. 
Virginia planters, heavily mortgaged, welcomed anything 
which would postpone payment of their debts, — a motive 
that doubtless avails largely among Secessionists now. So 
merchant and planter joined heartily with hot-headed 
Sam Adams, and reckless Joseph Warren, penniless John 
Adams, that brilliant adventurer Alexander Hamilton, 
and that young scapegrace Aaron Burr, to get indepen- 
dence. [Laughter.] To merchant, independence meant 
only direct trade, — to planter, cheating his creditors. 

Present conflict of interests is another instrument of 
progress. Religious persecution planted these States ; 
commercial persecution brought about the Revolution ; 
John Bull's perseverance in a seven-years war fused us 
into one nation ; his narrow and ill-tempered effort to gov- 
ern us by stealth, even after the peace of 1783, drove us 
to the Constitution of 1789. 

I think it was Coleridge who said, if he were a clergy- 
man in Cornwall, he should preach fifty-two sermons a 
year against wreckers. In the same spirit, I shall find the 
best illustration of our progress in the history of the slave 
question. 



374 ^^ROGRESS. 

Some men sit sad and trembling for the future, because 
the knell of this Union has sounded. But the heavens are 
almost all bright ; and if some sable clouds linger on the 
horizon, they have turned their silver linings almost wholly 
to our sight. Every man who possesses his soul in pa- 
tience sees that disunion is gain, disunion is peace^ disunion 
is virtue. 

Thomas Jefferson said : " It is unfortunate that the ef- 
forts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they 
have been deprived should be accompanied with violence, 
with errors, and even with crime. But while we weep 
over the means, we must pray for the end." 

We may see our future in the glass of our past history. 
The whole connection of Massachusetts Colony with Eng- 
land was as much disgrace as honor to both sides. On the 
part of England, it was an attempt to stretch principles 
which were common sense and justice applied to an island, 
but absurd and tyrannical applied aci-oss the ocean. It 
was power without right, masked in form. On the side 
of the Colony, it was petty shifts, quibbles, equivocations, 
cunnino; dodges, white lies, ever the resource of weakness. 
While England was bulldog, INIassachusetts was fox. 
Whoever cannot take his right openly by force, steals 
what he can by fraud. The Greek slave was a liar, as all 
slaves are. Tocqueville says, " Men are not corrupted by 
the exercise of power, nor debased by submission ; but by 
the exercise of power they think illegal, and submission 
to a rule they consider oppressive." That sentence is a 
key to our whole colonial history. When we grew strong 
enough to dare to be frank, we broke with England. 
Timid men wept ; but now we see how such disunion was 
gain, peace, and virtue. Indeed, seeming disunion was 
real union. We were then two snarling hounds, leashed 
tog(*ther ; we are now one in a true marriage, one in 
blood, trade, thought, religion, history, in mutual love and 



PROGRESS. 375 

respect ; where one then filched silver from the other, 
each now pours gold into the other's lap ; our only rivalry, 
which shall do most honor to the blood of Shakespeare and 
Milton, of Franklin and Kane. 

In that glass we see the story of North and South since 
1787, and I doubt not for all coming time. The people of 
the States between the Gulf and the great Lakes, yes, 
between the Gulf and the Pole, are essentially one. We 
are one in blood, trade, thought, religion, history ; nothing 
can long divide us. If we had let our Constitution o-rovv, 
as the English did, as oaks do, we had never passed 
tln^ough such scenes as the present. The only thmg that 
iivides us now, is the artificial attempt, in 1787, to force 
as into an unripe union. Some lawyers got together and 
wrote out a constitution. The people and great interests of 
the land, wealth, thought, fashion, and creed, unmediately 
laid it upon the shelf, and proceeded to grow one for them- 
selves. The treaty power sufficed to annex a continent, 
and change the whole nature of the government. The 
war power builds railroads to the Pacific. Right to regu- 
late commerce builds observatories and dredges out lakes. 
Kight to tax protects manufactures ; and had we wanted a 
king, some ingenious Yankee would have found the right 
to have one clearly stated in the provision for a well-regu- 
lated militia. [Laughter.] All that is valuable in the 
United States Constitution is a thousand years old. What 
is good is not new, and what is new is not good. That 
vaunted statesmanship which concocts constitutions never 
has amounted to anything. The English Constitution, 
always found equal to any crisis, is an old mansion, often 
repaired, with quaint additions, and seven gables, each of 
different pattern. Our Constitution is a new clapboard 
house, so square and sharp it almost cuts you to look at 
it, staring with Avliite paint and green blinds, as if dropped 
in the landscape, or come out to spend an afternooru 
[Laughter."! 



376 ^^PROGRESS. 

The trouble noAv is, that, in regard to the most turbu- 
lent question of the age, our poHticians and a knot of 
privileged slaveholders are trying *to keep the people in- 
side of this parchment band. Like Lycurgus, they would 
mould the people to fit the Constitution, instead of cutting 
the Constitution to fit the people. Goethe said, " If you 
plant an oak in a flower-vase, one of two things will hap- 
pen, — the oak will die, or the vase break." Our acorn 
swelled ; the tiny leaves showed themselves under the 
calm eye of Washington, and he laid down in hope. By 
and by the roots enlarged, and men trembled. Of late, 
"Webster and Clay, Everett and Botts, Seward and Adams, 
have been anxiously clasping the vase, but the roots have 
burst abroad at last, and the porcelain is in pieces. [Sen- 
sation.] All ye who love oaks, thank God for so much ! 
That Union of 1787 was one of fear ; we were driven into 
it by poverty and the commercial hostility of England. 
As cold masses up all things, — sticks, earth, stones, and 
water into dirty ice, — heat first makes separation, and 
then unites those of the same nature. The heat of sixty 
years' agitation has severed the heterogeneous mass ; wait 
awhile, it will fuse together all that is really one. 

Let me show you why I think the present so bright, 
and why I believe that disunion is gain, peace, and honor. 

Why is the present hour sunshine ? Because, for the 
first time in our history, we have a North. That event 
which Mr. Webster anticipated and prophesied has come 
to pass. In a real, true sense, we have a North. By 
which I do not mean that the North rules ; though, politi- 
cally speaking, the crowned and sceptred North does, 
indeed, take her seat in that council where she has thus 
far been only a tool. But I mean that freemen, honest 
labor, makes itself heard in our State. The North ceases 
to be fox or spaniel, and puts on the lion. She asserts and 
claims. She no longer begs, cheats, or buys. 



PROGRESS. 377 

Understand me. In 1787, slave property, worth, per- 
haps, two hundred million of dollars, strengthened by the 
sympathy of all other capital, was a mighty power. It 
was the Rothschild of the state. The Constitution, by its 
tJiree-fiftlis slave basis, made slaveholders an order of nobles. 
It was the house of Hapsburg joining hands with the 
house of Rothschild. Prejudice of race was the third 
strand of the cable, bitter and potent as Catholic ever bore 
Huguenot, or Hungary ever spit on Moslem. This fear- 
ful trinity won to its side that mysterious omnipotence 
called Fashion, — a power which, without concerted ac- 
tion, without either thought, law, or religion on its side, 
seems stronger than all of them, and fears no foe but 
wealth. Such was slavery. In its presence the North 
always knelt and whispered. When slavery could not 
bully, it bubbled its victim. In the convention that 
framed the Constitution, Massachusetts men said, as 
Charles Francis Adams says now, "What matters a piti- 
ful three-fifths slave basis, and guaranty against insurrec- 
tion, to an institution on its death-bed, — gasping for its 
last breath ? It may co7iciliate, — is only a shadow, — 
nothing more, — why stand on words ? So they shut 
their eyes, as he does, on realities, and chopped excellent 
logic on forms. 

But at that moment, the Devil hovered over Charles- 
ton, with a handful of cotton-seed. [Applause.] Dropped 
into sea-island soil, and touched by the magic of Massa- 
chusetts brains, it poisoned the atmosphere of thirty 
States. That cotton fibre was a rod of empire such as 
Caesar never wielded. It fattened into obedience pulpit 
and rostrum, court, market-place, and college, and leashed 
New York and Chicago to its chair of state. Beware, 
Mr. Adams, " he needs a long spoon who sups with the 
Devil." In the kaleidoscope of the future, no statesman 
eye can foresee the forms. God gives manhood but ono 



378 ^^ PROGRESS. 

clew to success, — utter and exact justice : that he guaran- 
tees shall be always expediency. Deviate one hair's- 
breadth, — grant but a dozen slaves, — only the tiniest 
seed of concession, — you know not how "many and tall 
branches of mischief shall grow therefrom." That hand- 
ful of cotton-seed has perpetuated a system which, as 
Emerson says, "impoverishes the soil, depopulates the 
country, demoralizes the master, curses the victim, en- 
rages the bystander, poisons the atmosphere, and hinders 
civilization." 

I need not go over the subsequent compromises in de- 
tail. They are always of the same kind: mere words, 
Northern men assured us, — barren concessions. " Phys- 
ical geography and Asiatic scenery " hindered any harm. 
But the South Avas always specially anxious to have these 
barren " words," and marvellously glad when she got 
them. Northern politicians, in each case, were either 
bullied or cheated, or feigned to be bullied, as they are 
about to do now. And the people were glad to have it so. 
I do not know that the politicians are a whit better now 
than then. I should not be willing to assert that Seward 
and Adams are any more honest than Webster and Win 
throp, and certainly they have just as much spaniel ii 
their make. 

But the gain to-day is, we have a people. Under thei; 
vigilant eyes, mindful of their sturdy purpose, sustaine(* 
by then* determination, many of our politicians act much 
better. And out of this popular heart is groiving a Con- 
stitution which will wholly supersede that of 1787. 

A few years ago, while Pierce was President, the Re- 
publican party dared to refuse the a]')propriations for sup- 
port of government, — the most daring act ever ventured 
in a land that holds Bunker Hill and Brandyvvine. They 
dared to persevere some twenty or thii'ty days. It seems 
a trifle ; but it is a very significant straw. Then for weeks 



FKOGRESS. 379 

when Banks was elected, and a year ago, again, the whole 
government was checked till the Republicans put their 
Speaker in the chair. Now the North elects her Presi- 
dent, the South secedes. I suppose we shall be bargained 
away into compromise. I know the strength and virtue 
of the farming West. It is one of the bright spots that 
our sceptre tends there, rather than to the seaboard. 
Four or eight years hence, when this earthquake will 
repeat itself, the West may be omnipotent, and we shall 
see brave things. It is not the opinion of the absolute 
majority which rules, but that amount of public opinion 
which can be brought to bear on a particular point at a 
given time. Therefore the compact, energetic, organized 
Seaboard, with the press in its hand, rules, spite of the 
wide-spread, inert, unorganized West. While the agri- 
cultural frigate is getting its broadside ready, the commer- 
cial clipper has half finished its slave voyage. 

In spite of Lincoln's wishes, therefore, I fear he will 
never be able to stand against Seward, Adams, half the 
Republican wire-pullers, and the Seaboard. But even 
now, if Seward and the rest had stood firm, as Lincoln, 
Sumner, Chase, Wade, and Lovejoy, and the Tribune 
have hitherto done, I believe you might have polled the 
North, and had a response, three to one : " Let the Union 
go to pieces, rather than yield one inch." I know no 
sublimer hour in history. The sight of these two months 
is compensation for a life of toil. Never let Europe taunt 
us again that our blood is wholly cankered by gold. Our 
people stood, willing their idolized government should go 
to pieces for an idea. True, other nations have done so. 
England in 1640, — France in 1791, — our colonies in 
1775. Those were proud moments. But to-day touches 
a nobler heio-ht. Their idea was their own freedom. To- 
day, the idea, loyal to which our people willingly see their 
Union wrecked, is largely the hope of justice to a depen- 



380 PEOGRESS. 

dent, helpless, hated race. Revolutions never go back- 
ward. The live force of a human pulse-beat can rive the 
dead lumber of government to pieces. Chain the Helles- 
pont, Mr. Xerxes-Seward, before you dream of balking 
the Northern heart of its purpose, — freedom to the slave ! 
The old sea never lauo;hed at Persian chains more hauo-h- 
tily than we do at Congress promises. 

I reverently thank God that he has given me to see 
such a day as this. Remember the measureless love of 
the North for the Union, — its undoubting faith that dis- 
union is ruin, — and then value as you ought this last three 
months. If Wilberforce could say on his death-bed, after 
fifty years' toil, " Thank God, I have lived to see the day 
that England is willing to give tw^enty million sterling for 
the abolition of slavery," what ought our gratitude to be 
for such a sight as this ? Twenty millions of people will- 
ing, would only their leaders permit, to barter their gov- 
ment for the hope of justice to the negro ! And this 
result has come in defiance of the pulpit, spite of the half 
omnipotence of commerce, with all the so-called leaders of 
public opinion against us, — literature, fashion, prejudice 
of race, and present interest. It is the uprising of com- 
mon sense, the protest of common conscience, the un- 
taught, instinctive loyalty of the people to justice and 
I'ight. 

But you will tell me of dark clouds, mobs in every 
Northern city. Grant it, and more. When Lovejoy was 
shot at Alton, Illinois, while defending his press, and his 
friends were refused the use of Faneuil Hall, William 
Ellery Channing, William Sturgis, and George Bond, the 
saints and merchants of Boston, rallied to the defence of free 
speech. Now we hold meetings only when and how the 
Mayor permits [hisses and great applause], yet no mer- 
chant prince, no pulpit hero, rallies to our side. But raise 
your eyes from the disgraced pavements of Boston, and 



PROGRESS. 381 

look out broader. That same soil which drank the blood 
of Lovejoy now sends his brother to lead Congress in its 
fiercest hour ; that same prairie lifts his soul's son to crush 
the Union as he steps into the Presidential chair. Sleep 
in peace, martyr of Alton, good has come out of Nazareth ! 
The sliot which turned back our Star of the West from the 
waters of Charleston, and tolled the knell of the Union, was 
the rebound of the bullet that pierced your heart. 

When Lovejoy died, men used to ask, tauntingly, what 
good has the antislavery cause done ? what changes has it 
wrought ? As well stand over the cradle, and ask what 
use is a baby ? He will be a man some time, — the anti- 
slavery cause is now twenty-one years old. 

This hour is bright from another cause. Since 1800, 
our government has been only a tool of the Slave Power. 
The stronghold of antislavery has been the sentiment of 
the people. We have always prophesied that our govern- 
ment would be found too weak to bear so radical an amta- 
tion as this of slavery. It has proved so ; the government 
is a wreck. But the people have shown themselves able 
to deal with it, — able to shake this sin from their lap as 
easily as the lion does dew-drops from his mane. 

Mark another thing. No Northern man will allow you 
to charge him with a willingness to extend slavery. No 
matter what his plan, he is anxious to show you it is not a 
compromise ! and will not extend slavery one inch ! Mr. 
Dana is eloquent on this point, Mr. Adams positive, Mr. 
Seward cunning, Thurlow Weed indignant. [Laughter.] 
V^irtue is not wholly discrowned, while hypocrisy is the 
homage laid at her feet. With such progress, why should 
we compromise ? 

Everybody allows — North and South — that any com- 
promise will only be temporary relief. The South knows 
it is a lie, meant to tide over a shallow spot. The North 
knows it, too. The startled North, in fact, now says 



882 ^^ PROGRESS. 

** Yes, I '11 continue to serve you till my hair be grown, 
then I '11 bring down the very temple itself." That ia 
what a compromise really means. The progress is seen in 
this. The South always has said: "Yes, give me so much; 
I w^ill not keep my part of the bargain, but hold you to 
yours, and get more the moment I can." Hitherto, the 
North has said yes, and her courage consisted in skulking. 
Seward would swear to support the Constitution, but not 
keep the oath. I use his name to illustrate my idea. But 
it is always with the extremest reluctance I bring myself 
to see a spot on the fame of that man, who, at his own 
cost, by severe toil, braving fierce odium, saved our civili- 
zation from the murder of the idiot Freeman. 

But you may also ask, if compromise be even a tempo- 
rary relief, why not make it ? 

1st. Because it is wroncr. 

2d. Because it is suicidal. Secession, appeased by com- 
promise, is only emboldened to secede again to-morrow, 
and thus get larger concessions. The cow^ardice that yields 
to threats invites them. 

3d. Because it delays emancipation. To-day, England, 
horror-struck that her five million operatives who live on 
cotton should depend on States rushing into anarchy, is 
ransacking the w^orld for a supply. Leave her to toil under 
that lash, and in five years. South Carolina will be starved 
into virtue. One thousand slaves are born each day. 
Hurry emancipation three years, and you raise a million 
human beings into free born men. 

4th. Compromise demoralizes both parties. Mark ! the 
North, notwithstanding all its progress, does not now quit 
the South. In the great religious bodies and the state^ it 
is the sinners who kick the virtuous out of the covenant 
with death ! Mr. Dana, in his recent speech, does not 
secede because unwillino^ to commit the three constitu- 
tional sins. The South secedes from him because he will 
not commit one more. 



PROGRESS. 383 

5t.h. Compromise risks insurrection, the worst door at 
which freedom can enter. Let universal suffrage have 
free sway, and the ballot supersedes the bullet. But let 
an arrogant and besotted minority curb the majority by 
tricks like these, and when you have compromised away 
Lincoln, you revive John Brown. On this point of insur- 
rection, let me say a word. 

Strictly speaking, I repudiate the term " insurrection." 
The slaves are not a herd of vassals. They are a nation, 
four millions strong ; having the same right of revolution 
that Hungary and Florence have. I acknowledge the 
right of two million and a half of white people in the seven 
seceding States to organize their government as they 
choose. Just as freely I acknowledge the right of four 
million of black people to organize their government, and 
to vindicate that right by arms. 

Men talk of the peace of the South under our present 
government. It is no real peace. With the whites, it is 
only that bastard peace which the lazy Roman loved, — ut 
8P. apricaret^ — tliat he might sun himself. It is only safe 
idleness, sure breeder of mischief. With the slave, it is 
only war in disguise. Under that mask is hid a war 
keener in its pains, and deadlier in its effects, than any 
open fight. As the Latin adage runs, — mars gravior sub 
face lately — war bitterer for its disguise. 

Thirty years devoted to earnest use of moral means 
show how sincere our wish that this question should have 
a peaceful solution. If your idols — your Websters, 
Clays, Calhouns, Sewards, Adamses — had done their 
duty, so it would have been. Not ours the guilt of this 
storm, or of the future, however bloody. But I hesitate 
not to say, that I prefer an insurrection which frees the 
slave in ten years to slavery for a century. A slave I 
pity. A rebellious slave I respect. I say now, as I said 
ten years ago, I do not shrink from the toast with which 



384 PROGRESS. 

Dr. Jolmson flavored his Oxford Port, " Success to the 
first insurrection of the blacks in Jamaica ! " I do not 
shrink from the sentiment of Southey, in a letter to 
Duppa: "There are scenes of tremendous horror which I 
could smile at by Mercy's side. An insurrection which 
should make the negroes masters of the West Indies is 
one." I believe both these sentiments are dictated by 
the highest humnnity. I know what anarchy is. I know 
what civil war is. I can imagine the scenes of blood 
through which a rebellious slave population must march to 
their rights. They are dreadful. And yet, I do not 
know, that, to an enlightened mind, a scene of civil war 
is any more sickening than the thought of a hundred and 
fifty years of slavery. Take the broken hearts ; the be- 
reaved mothers ; the infant, wrung from the hands of its 
parents ; the husband and wife torn asunder ; every right 
trodden under foot ; the blighted hopes, the imbruted 
souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below the 
level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded with 
beasts, who have walked over the burning marl of South- 
ern slavery to their graves ; and where is the battle-field, 
however ghastly, that is not white, — white as an angel's 
wing, — compared with the blackness of that darkness 
which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred 
years ? Do you love mercy ? Weigh out the fifty thou- 
sand hearts that have beaten their last pulse amid agonies 
of thought and suflPering fancy faints to think of; and the 
fifty thousand mothers, who, with sickening senses, watch 
for footsteps which are not wont to tarry long in their com- 
ing, and soon find themselves left to tread the pathway of 
life alone ; add all the horrors of cities sacked and lands 
laid waste, — that is war; weigh it now against some 
trembling young girl sent to the auction-block, some man, 
like that taken from our court-house and carried back into 
Georgia; multiply this individual agony into four mil- 



PROGRESS. 385 

lions ; multiply that into centuries ; and that into all the 
relations of father and child, husband and wife ; heap on 
all the deep, moral degradation, both of the oppressor and 
the oppressed, and tell me if Waterloo or Thermopylas 
can claim one tear from the eye even of the tenderest 
spirit of mercy, compared with this daily system of hell 
amid the most civilized and Christian people on the face 
of the earth ! * 

No, I confess I am not a non-resistant. The reason 
why I have advised the slave to be guided by a policy of 
peace is because he has had, hitherto, no chance. If he 
had one, if he had as good a chance as those who went up 
to Lexington years ago, I should call him the basest rec 
reant that ever deserted wife and child, if he did not 
vindicate his liberty by his own right hand. 

Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., says, in such a contest his 
sympathies would be with his own race.f Mine would be 

* Since I said this, ten years ago, I find that Macaulay makes the same 
comparison between a short civil war and long despotism, — putting into 
Milton's mouth the following : " For civil war, that it is an evil I dispute 
not. But that it is the greatest of evils, that I stoutly deny. It doth indeed 
appear to the misjudging to be a worse calamity than bad government, be- 
cause its miseries are collected together within a short space and time, and 
may easily, at one view, be taken in and perceived. But the misfortunes of 
nations ruled by tyrants, being distributed over many centuries and many- 
places, as they are of greater weight and number, so they are of less dis- 
play," 

t The following is the paragraph in Mr. Dana's address referred to by 
Mr. Phillips : — 

" An appeal to arms is a war of the races. They meet on the equality of 
the battle-field, and the victG"T goes to the strongest; ana I confess that, 
tvSen I consider what the white race is, and what the black race is, what 
tivilization is, and what the white race is and always has been, and what the 
black race is and always has been, — and this doctrine of the races has im- 
pressed itself on my mind much more than before, from what I have seen of 
all races during the last year and a half, — 1 confess that, in a contest like 
that, my duty and my sympathies would go with my own race. I know it 
is a contest for freedom, but it is a contest for life and for freedom on both 
25 



886 ^PROGRESS. 

witli the right. " The Almighty has no attribute which 
can take sides with us in such a contest," says Jefferson, 
speaking of a struggle in which the black race " is to go 
up," and his own, the white race, is "to go down." Let 
me advise Mr. Dana to learn Christianity of this infidel, 
and Justice of this slaveholder. I feel bound to add my 
doubt whether a slave insurrection would be a bloody one. 
In all revolutions, except the French, the people ha\e 
always shown themselves merciful. Witness Switzerland, 
St. Domingo, Hungary, Italy. Tyranny sours more than 
suffering. The Conservative hates the Abolitionist more 
than we do him. The South hates the North. The 
master speaks ten bitter words of the slave, where the 
slave speaks five of the master. Refuse, then, all compro- 
mise, — send the Slave States out to face the danger of 
which they are fully aware, — announce frankly that we 
welcome the black race to liberty, won In battle, as cor- 
dially as we have done Kossuth and Ganbaldl, and proba- 
bly there will never be an insurrection. Prudent and 
masterly statesmanship will avert it by just concession. 
Thus Disunion is Peace, as well as Liberty and Justice. 

But I was speaking of compromise. Compromise de- 
grades us, and puts back freedom in Europe. If the 
North manfully accepts the Potomac for her barrier, 
avows her gladness to get rid of tyrants, her willingness 
and her ability to stand alone, she can borrow as much 
money in Europe as before, and will be more respected. 
Free institutions are then proved breeders of men. If, 
instead of this, the North belittles herself by confessing 
her fears, her weakness, her preference for peace at any 

sides, because slavery is to end ivhen war begins. One race is to go up, and 
one to go down. It is a question of extermination, or banishment, or subju- 
gation, or all three. And I have not arrived at that degree of philanthropy, 
that I desire to see the black race controlling all that vast country, and oul 
own white civilized race driven out, subjugated, or exterminated." 



PROGRESS. 387 

price, what capitalist will trust a rope of sand, — a people 
which the conspiracy of Buchanan's Cabinet could not 
disgust, nor the guns of Carolina arouse ? 

Will compromise eliminate all our Puritan blood, — 
make the census add up against us, and in favor of the 
South, — write a new Bible, — blot John Brown from his- 
tory, — make Connecticut suck its idle thumbs like a baby, 
and South Carolina invent and save like a Yankee ? If it 
will, it will succeed. If it will not, Carolina don't want 
it, any more than Jerrold's duck wants you to hold an 
umbrella over him in a hard shower. Carolina wants sep- 
aration, — wants, like the jealous son, her portion, and 
must waste it in riotous madness before she return a re- 
pentant prodigal. 

Why do I think disunion gain, peace, and virtue ? 

The Union, even if it be advantageous to all the States, 
is surely indispensable only to the South. 

Let us rise to the height of our position. This is revo- 
lution, not rebellion. 

Suppose we welcome disunion, manfully avow our real 
sentiment, "liberty and equality," and draw the line at 
the Potomac. We do not want the Border States. Let 
them go, be welcome to the forts, take the Capital with 
them. [Applause and hisses.] What to us is a hot-house 
city, empty streets, and useless marble ? Where Mac- 
gregor sits is the head of the table. Active brains, free 
lips, and cunning hands make empires. Paper capitals 
are vain. Of course, we must assume a right to buy out 
Maryland and Delaware. Then, by running our line at 
the Potomac, we close the irrepressible conflict, and have 
homogeneous institutions. Then we part friends. The 
Union thus ended, the South no longer hates the North. 
Cuba she cannot have. France, England, and ourselves 
forbid. If she spread over Central America, that will 
bring no cause of war to a Northern confederacy. We 



388 ^^^^ROGRESS. 

are no filibusters. Her nearness to us there cannot harm 
us. Let Kansas witness that while Union fettered her, 
and our national banner clung to the flagstaff heavy 
with blood, we still made good George Canning's boast, 
*' Where that banner is planted, foreign dominion shall not 
come." With a government heartily on his side, and that 
flag floating in the blessings of twenty million of freemen, 
the lonehest settler in the shadow of the Rocky Moun- 
tains will sleep fearless. 

Why, then, should there not be peace between two 
such confederacies ? There must be. Let me show you 
why : — 

1st. The laws of trade will bind us together, as they 
now do all other lands. This side of the ocean, at leasts 
we are not living in feudal times, Avhen princes make war 
for ambition. We live in days when men of common 
sense go about their daily business, while frightened kings 
are flying along the highways. Leave neighborhood and 
trade alone to work their usual results, and we shall be at 
peace. Observe, only Northerners are lynched at the 
South now. Spaniards, French, Scotch are safe. When 
English Captain Vaughan is tarred and feathered, the 
Mayor offers a reward, and the grand jury indict. After 
a fair, sensible disunion, such as I have described, a Bos- 
ton man will be as well off as Captain Vaughan. Fair 
treaties are better security than sham constitutions. 

At any rate, disunion could not make the two sections 
any more at war than they are now. Any change in this 
respect would be an improvement. If the North and 
Mexico had touched boundaries, would they ever have 
quarrelled ? Nothing but Southern filibusterism, which 
can never point North, ever embroiled us with Mexico. 
To us in future the South will be another Mexico ; we 
shall not wish to attack her ; she will be too weak, too 
intent on her own broils, to attack us. 



PROGRESS. 389 

Even if the Border States do not secede, let us, for the 
slave's sake, welcome the schism between them and the 
Gulf States, which that very difference of conduct will be 
sure to cause. A house divided against itself cannot 
stand. Only twenty-three out of every hundred inhab- 
itants are slaves in the Border States, — twenty-three 
slaves to seventy-seven freemen. A worn-out soil, fear of 
loss by fugitives, dread of danger to a hated institution, 
thus weak in proportion to Northern enemies, will urge 
slaveholders to push their slaves southward. Another 
census may find the Border States with only ten or fifteen 
slaves out of one hundred inhabitants, — ten slaves to 
ninety freemen. Reduced to such compass, slavery is 
manageable ; we shall soon see plans of emancipation, 
compensation, and freedom. On the contrary, the Gulf 
States now have forty-six slaves in every hundred inhabi- 
tants, — forty-six slaves to fifty-four freemen. Strength- 
ened by this tendency of the slave population southward, 
and the opening of the slave-trade, we may soon see the 
black race a majority, and either as a nation of mixed 
races, or as black republics, the Gulf States will gravitate 
back to us free. 

The South cannot make war on any one. Suppose the 
fifteen States hang together a year, — which is almost an 
impossibility, — 

1st. They have given bonds in two thousand millions of 
dollars — the value of their slaves — to keep the peace. 

2d. They will have enough to do to attend to the irre- 
pressible conflict at home. Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, 
will be their Massachusetts ; Winter Davis, Blair, and 
Cassius Clay, their Seward and Garrison. 

3d. The Gulf States will monopolize all the offices. A 
man must have Gulf principles to belong to a healthy 
party. Under such a lead,, disfranchised Virginia, in op- 
position, will not have much heart to attack Pennsylvania. 



890 ^^OGRESS. 

4th. The census shows that the Border States are push- 
ing their slaves South. Fear of their free Northern neigh- 
bors will quicken the process, and s'o widen the breach 
between Gulf and Border States by making one constantly 
more and the other less Slave States. Free trade in su^ar 
bankrupts Louisiana. Free trade in men bankrupts Vir- 
ginia. Free trade generally lets two thirds of the direct 
taxation rest on the numerous, richer, and more comfort- 
able whites of the Border States ; hence further conflict. 
Such a despotism, with every third man black and a foe, 
will make no wars. 

Why should it attack us ? We are not a cannon thun- 
dering at its gates. We are not an avalanche overhang- 
ing its sunny vales. Our influence, that of freedom, is 
only the air, penetrating everywhere ; like heat, permeat- 
ing all space. The South cannot stand isolated on a glass 
cricket. The sun will heat her, and electricity convulse. 
She must outwit ideas before she can £i;et rid of them. A 
fevered chfld in July might as well strike at the sun, as 
the South attack us for that, the only annoyance we can 
give her, — the sight and influence of our nobler civiliza- 
tion. 

Disunion is gain. I venture the assertion, in the face 
of State Street, that of any five Northern men engaged 
in Southern trade, exclusively, four will end in bankrupt- 
cy. If disunion sifts such commerce, the North will lose 
nothing. 

I venture the assertion, that seven at least of the South- 
ern States i-eceive from the government more than they 
contribute to it. So far, their place will be more profitable 
than their company. 

The whole matter of the Southci-n trade has been grossly 
exaggerated, as well as the importance of the Mississippi 
River. Freedom makes her own rivers of iron. Facts 
show that for one dollar the West sends or brings by the 



PROGRESS. 391 

river, she sends and brings four to and from the East by 
wagon and rail. 

If, then, Mississippi and Louisiana bar the river v^rith 
forts, they will graciously be allowed to pay for them, 
while Northern railroads grow rich carrying behind steam 
that portion of wheat, bacon, silk, or tea, which would 
otherwise float lazily up and down that yellow stream. 

The Cincinnati Press, which has treated the subject with 
rare ability, asserts that, excepting provisions which the 
South must, in any event, buy of the West, the trade of 
Cincinnati with Southern Indiana alone is thrice her trade 
with the whole South. As our benevolent societies get 
about one dollar in seven south of Mason and Dixon's 
line, so our traders sell there only about one dollar in five. 
Such trade, if cut off, would ruin nobody. In fact, the 
South buys little of us, and pays only for about half she 
buys. [Laughter and hisses.] 

Now we build Southern roads, pay Southern patrol, 
carry Southern letters, support, out of the nation's treas- 
ures, an army of Southern office-holders, waste more 
money at Norfolk in building ships which will not float, than 
IS spent in protecting the five Great Lakes, which bear up 
millions of commerce. These vast pensions come back to 
lis in shape of Southern traders, paying on the average 
one half their debts. Dissolve the Union, and we shall 
save this outgo, and probably not sell without a prospect 
of being paid. While the laws of trade guarantee that 
even if there be two nations, we shall have their carrying- 
trade and manufacture for them just so long as we carry 
and manufacture cheaper than other men. 

Southern trade is a lottery, to which the Union gives all 
the prizes. Put it on a sound basis by disunion, and the 
North gains. If we part without anger, the South buys, 
as every one does, of the cheapest seller. We get her 
honest business, without being called to fill up the gap of 



892 ^^lOGEESS. 

bankruptcy which the wasteful system of slave-labor must 
occasion. In this generation, no Slave State in the Union 
has made the year's ends meet. In 'counting the wealth 
of the Union, such States are a minus quantity. Should 
the Gulf States, however, return, I have no doubt the 
United States treasury will be called on to pay all these 
secession debts. 

Disunion is honor. I wiU not point to the equivocating 
hypocrisy of all our Northern leaders. I will not coimt 
up all the bankrupt statesmen, — blighted names, — skele- 
tons marking the sad path of the caravan over our desert 
of seventy years, — they are too familiar. As years roll 
on, history metes out justice. But take the last instance, 
— take Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., as example, a name 
historic for generations, a scholar of world-wide fame. 
He finds in the Constitution the duty of returning fugitive 
slaves, all alike, " the old and the ignorant, the young and 
the beautiful," to be surrendered to the master, whether 
he be man or brute. Mr. Dana avows his full readiness 
to perform this legal duty. All honor at least to the 
shameless effrontery with which he avows his wilHngness. 
Most of our public men, like the English Tories of 1689, 
are " ashamed to name what they are not ashamed to do." 
He paints the hell of slavery in words that make the blood 
cold, and then boasts, this Massachusetts scholar, — gen- 
tleman, his friends would call him, — boasts that no man 
can charge him with having ever said one word against 
the surrender of fuo-itive slaves ! Counsel in all the Bos- 
ton slave-cases, he " never suffered himself to utter one 
word which any poor fugitive negro, or any friend of his, 
could construe into an assertion that a fugitive slave should 
not be restored " ! 

He unblushingly claims merit for himself and Massa- 
chusetts, — I doubt if, in the scornful South, he will have 
*'liis claim allowed," — that he and Massachusetts have 



PROGRESS. 393 

constantly executed laws which " offended their sense of 
honor, and ran counter to then- moral sentiments," which 
he considers a "painful dutyT To be sure, Mr. Dana 
has discovered, in his wide travels and extensive voyages, a 
*' peculiar " class of people, narrow-minded, very little read 
in Greek, who think, poor simpletons, that this slave-hunt- 
ing is a sin. But then, Aristotle did not look at things in 
this light. He took broader views, and proves conclusively 
that three virtues and one sin exactly make a saint, and 
Mr. Dana is too good a churchman to dispute with Aris- 
totle. He sees no reason why, notwithstanding this clause, 
as to forcing our fellow-men back into hell, " a conscien- 
tious man " should not swear to obey the Constitution, and 
actually obey it. Now Mr. Seward and Mr. Joel Parker, 
who both believe in the fugitive-slave clause, and willingly 
Sfivear to enforce it, have each given public notice they will 
not enforce it. Mr. Dana will swear, and perform too. 
They will swear, but not perform. Their guilt is perjury ; 
his is man-stealing. On the whole, I should rather be 
Seward than Dana ; for perjury is the more gentlemanly 
vice, to my thinking. Perjury only filches your neigh- 
bor's rights. Man-stealino; takes rio;hts and nelo-hbor too. 
After all this, Mr. Dana objects to the Crittenden com- 
promise. Something short of that he can allow, because 
he does not call these other offers, Adams's and such like, 
" compromises " ! It seems he objects more to the word 
than the thing. But the Crittenden proposal he is set 
against, for a reason which may strike you singular in a. 
man willing to return slaves ; but then we are bundles of 
inconsistencies, all of us. But this slave-hunter cannot 
abide Crittenden, because, listen ! because he thinks " an 
investment in dishonor is a bad Investment ! An invest- 
ment in infidelity to the principles of liberty is a bad in- 
vestment ! " Hunt slaves ? Yes, it Is a duty. Give some 
territory to slavery, and peril the Republican party f 



394 PROGRESS. 

Never, it is a *' bad investment " ! De Quincey says : 
" If once a man indulges in murder, very soon he comes 
to think Httle of robbing ; from robbing he comes next to 
drinking, and from that to ill manners and procrastination. 
Once enter this downward path, and you know not where 
you '11 stop." Mr. Dana has, however, taken warning, 
and stops at man-stealing. 

Some of you will call this personality. I wall tell you 
some time, when the hour serves, why I use personality. 
Enough now to remind you his clients are wealth, culture, 
power, and white blood. Mine are four million of human 
beings, standing dumb suppliants on the threshold of 
Christianity and civilization, and hundreds of fugitives 
trembling at every motion of the door-latch. Whoever 
perils their safety, or holds back the day of their redemp- 
tion by ingenious sophistry, base word, or base act, shall 
always find in me a critic. Let no man call me harsh ; I 
only repeat with emphasis words such men are not ashamed 
to speak. Southern Legrees can plead, if not an excuse, 
yet some extenuation. But when a Massachusetts Repub- 
lican, a Massachusetts lawyer, a Massachusetts scholar, 
avows such sentiments, he puts himself below the Le- 
grees. Blame not this plainness of speech. I have a 
hundred friends, as brave souls as God ever made, whose 
hearths are not as safe after honored men make such 
speeches. 

Faneuil Hall, too, kneels patient for its burden, and by 
its President that meeting says to the South, — Only name 
your terms, that is all we will trouble you to do. Like 
Luther's priest, who, when Catholics told him to pray one 
w^ay and Protestants another, ended by repeating the al- 
phabet, and begging God to frame a prayer agreeable to 
himself, so our Boston orator offers the South carte blanche^ 
the whole bundle of compromises, — Will she only conde- 
scend to indicate her preference ? 



PROGRESS. 895 

Mr. Dana is a man above the temptations of politics. 
The President of the Faneuil Hall meeting has no politi- 
cal aspirations, an independent merchant. Such speeches 
show how wide the gangrene of the Union spreads. Mr. 
Dana's speech was made, he says, in the shadow of Bun- 
ker's Hill, in sight of the spot where Washington first 
drew his sword. The other speech was borne to the roof 
of Faneuil Hall by the plaudits of a thousand merchants. 
Surely, such were not the messages Cambridge and our 
old Hall used to exchange ! Can you not hear Warren 
and Otis crying to their recreant representatives : " Sons, 
scorn to be slaves ! Believe, for our sakes, we did not 
fight for such a government. Trample it under foot. You 
cannot be poorer than we were. It cannot cost you more 
than our seven years of war. Do it, if only to show that 
we have not lived in vain " ? 



UNDER THE FLAG.* 



** Therefore thus saith the Lord : Ye have not hearkened unto me in pro- 
claiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor : 
behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pes- 
tilence, and to the famine." — Jer. xxxiv. 17. 

MANY times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have 
counselled peace, — urged, as well as I knew how, 
the expediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy, 
and the peaceful separation of these thirty-four States. 
One of the journals announces to you that I come here 
this morning to retract those opinions. No, not one of 
them ! [Applause.] I need them all, — every word I 
have spoken this winter, — every act of twenty-five years 
of my life, to make the welcome I give this war hearty 
and hot. Civil war is a momentous evil. It needs the 
soundest, most solemn justification. I rejoice before God 
to-day for every word that I have spoken counselling peace ; 
hut I rejoice also with an especially profound gratitude, 
that now, the first time in my antislavery life, I speak 
under the stars and stripes, and welcome the tread of 
Massachusetts men marshalled for war. [Enthusiastic 
cheering.] No matter what the past has been or said ; 
to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this banner, and 
counts it the pledge of his redemption. [Applause.] 
Hitherto it may have meant what you thought, or what I 

* A Discourse delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, April 21, 1861, before 
the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, the platform profusely decorated 
with the Stars and Stripes. 



UNDER THE FLAG. 397 

did ; to-day it represents sovereignty and justice. [Re- 
newed applause.] The only mistake that I have made, 
was in supposing Massachusetts wholly choked with cotton- 
dust and cankered with gold. [Loud cheering.] The 
South thought her patience and generous willingness for 
peace were cowardice ; to-day shows the mistake. She 
has been sleeping on her arms since '83, and the first 
cannon-shot brings her to her feet with the war-cry of the 
Revolution on her lips. [Loud cheers.] Any man who 
loves either liberty or manhood must rejoice at such an 
hour. [Applause.] 

Let me tell you the path by which I at least have trod 
my way up to this conclusion. I do not acknowledge the 
motto, in its full significance, " Our country, right or 
wrong." If you let it trespass on the domain of morals, 
it is knavish. But there is a full, broad sphere for loyal- 
ty ; and no war-cry ever stirred a generous people that 
had not in it much of truth and right. It is sublime, this 
rally of a great people to the defence of what they think 
their national honor I A " noble and puissant nation 
rousing herself like a strong man from sleep, and shaking 
her invincible locks." Just now, we saw her " reposing, 
peaceful and motionless ; but at the call of patriotism, she 
ruffles, as it were, her swelhng plumage, collects her scat- 
tered elements of strength, and awakens her dormant 
thunders." 

But how do we justify this last appeal to the God of 
battles ? Let me tell you how I do. I have always be- 
lieved in the sincerity of Abraham Lincoln. You have 
heard me express my confidence in it every time I have 
spoken from this desk. I only doubted sometimes whether 
he were really the head of the government. To-day he 
is at any rate Commander-in-chief. 

The delay in the action of government has doubtless 
been necessity, but policy also. Traitors within and with- 



898 im^H THE FLAG. 

out made it hesitate to move till it had tried the machine 
of government just given it. But delay was wise, as it 
matured a public opinion definite, decisive, and ready to 
keep step to the music of the government march. The 
very postponement of another session of Congress till July 
4th plainly invites discussion, — evidently contemplates 
the ripening of public opinion in the interval. Fairly to 
examine public affairs, and prepare a community wise to 
co-operate with the government, is the duty of every 
pulpit and every press. 

Plain words, therefore, now, before the nation goes mad 
with excitement, is every man's duty. Every public 
meeting in Athens was opened with a curse on any one 
who should not speak what he really thought. " I have 
never defiled my conscience from fear or favor to my 
superiors," was part of the oath every Egyptian soul was 
supposed to utter in the Judgment-Hall of Osiris, before 
admission to heaven. Let us show to-day a Christian 
spirit as sincere and fearless. No mobs in this hour of 
victory, to silence those whom events have not converted. 
We are strong enough to tolerate dissent. That flag 
which floats over press or mansion at the bidding of a 
mob, disgraces both victor and victim. 

All winter long, I have acted with that party which 
cried for peace. The antislavery enterprise to which I 
belong started with peace written on its banner. We 
imagined that the age of bullets was over; that the age 
of ideas had come ; that thu'ty millions of people were 
able to take a great question, and decide it by the conflict 
of opinions ; that, without letting the ship of state foun- 
der, we could lift four millions of men into Liberty and 
Justice. We thought that if your statesmen would throw 
away personal ambition and party watchwords, and devote 
themselves to the great issue, this might be accomplished. 
To a certain extent it has been. The North has answered 



UNDER THE FLAG. 399 

to the call. Year after year, event by event, has indi- 
cated the rising education of the people, — the readiness 
for a higher moral life, the calm, self-poised confidence 
in our own convictions that patiently waits — like master 
for a pupil — for a neighbor's conversion. The North 
has responded to the call of that peaceful, moral, intel- 
lectual agitation which the antislavery idea has initiated. 
Our mistake, if any, has been that we counted too much 
on the intelligence of the masses, on the honesty and 
wisdom of statesmen as a class. Perhaps we did not give 
weight enough to the fact we saw, that this nation is made 
up of different ages ; not homogeneous, but a mixed mass 
of different centuries. The North thinks, — can appreci- 
ate argument, — is the nineteenth century, — hardly any 
stmggle left in it but that between the working class and 
the money-kings. The South dreams, — it is the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth century, — baron and serf, — noble 
and slave. Jack Cade and Wat Tyler loom over its 
horizon, and the serf, rising, calls for another Thierry to 
record his strucro-le. There the fasjot still burns which the 
Doctors of the Sorbonne called, ages ago, " the best light 
to guide the erring." There men are tortured for opin- 
ions, the only punishment the Jesuits were willing their 
pupils should look on. This is, perhaps, too flattering a 
picture of the South. Better call her, as Sumner does, 
''the Barbarous States." Our struggle, therefore, is be- 
tween barbarism and civilization. Such can only be set- 
tled by arms. [Prolonged cheering.] The government 
has waited until its best friends almost suspected its 
courage or its integrity ; but the cannon shot against Fort 
Sumter has opened the only door out of this hour. There 
were but two. One was compromise ; the other was 
battle. TJie integrity of the North closed the first ; the 
generous forbearance of nineteen States closed the other. 
The South opened this with cannon-shot, and Lincoln 



400 ^>I^ER THE FLAG. 

shows himself at the door. [Prolonged and enthusiastic 
cheering.] The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self- 
defence, and Washington has become the Thermopylae of 
Liberty and Justice. [Applause.] Rather than suiTen- 
der that Capital, cover every square foot of it w^ith a living 
body [loud cheers] ; crowd it with a million of men, and 
empty every bank vault at the North to pay the cost. 
[Renewed cheering.] Teach the world once for all, that 
North America belongs to the Stars and Stripes, and 
under them no man shall wear a cham. [Enthusiastic 
cheering.] In the whole of this conflict, I have looked 
only at Liberty, — only at the slave. Perry entered the 
battle of the Lakes with " Don't give up the ship ! " 
floating; from the masthead of the Lawrence. When 
with his fighting flag he left her crippled, heading nortli, 
and, mounting the deck of the Niagara, turned her bows 
due west, he did all for one and the same purpose, — to 
rake the decks of the foe. Steer north or west, acknowl- 
edge secession or cannonade it, I care not which ; but 
"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the 
inhabitants thereof." [Loud cheers.] 

I said, civil war needs momentous and solemn justifica- 
tion. Europe, the world, may claim of us, tnat, before we 
blot the nineteenth century by an appeal to arms, we 
shall exhaust every concession, try every means to keep 
the peace ; otherwise, an appeal to the God of battles is 
an insult to the civilization of our age ; it is a confession 
that our culture and our religion are superficial, if not a 
failure. I think that the history of the nation and of the 
government both is an ample justification to our own 
times and to history for this appeal to arms. I think the 
South is all wrong, and the administration is all right. 
[Prolonged cheering.] Let me tell you why. For thu'ty 
years the North has exhausted conciliation and compro- 
mise. They have tried every expedient, they have relin- 



UNDER THE FLAG. 401 

quished every right, they have sacrificed every interest 
they have smothered keen sensibihty to national honor, 
and Northern weight and supremacy in the Union ; have 
forgotten they were the majority in numbers and in 
wealth, in education and strength ; have left the helm, of 
government and the dictation of policy to the Southern 
States. For all this, the conflict waxed closer and hotter. 
The administration which preceded this was full of trai- 
tors and thieves. It allowed the arms, ships, money, 
military stores of the North to be stolen with impunity. 
Mr. Lincoln took office, robbed of all the means to defend 
the Constitutional rights of the government. He offered 
to withdraw from the walls of Sumter everything but the 
flag. He allowed secession to surround it with the strong- 
est forts which military science could build. The North 
offered to meet in convention her sister States, and ar- 
range the terms of peaceful separation. Strength and right 
yielded everything, — they folded their hands, waited 
the returning reason of the mad insurgents. Week after 
week elapsed, month after month went by, waiting for the 
sober second-thought of two millions and a half of people. 
The world saw the sublime sight of nineteen millions of 
wealthy, powerful, united citizens, allowing their flag to be 
insulted, their rights assailed, their sovereignty defied and 
broken in pieces, and yet waiting, with patient, brotherly, 
magnanimous kindness, until insurrection, having spent its 
fury, should reach out its hand for a peaceful arrangement. 
Men began to call it cowardice, on the one hand ; and we, 
who watched closely the crisis, feared that this effort to 
be magnanimous would demoralize the conscience and the 
courage of the North. We were afraid that, as the hour 
went by, the virtue of the people, white-heat as it stood 
on the fourth day of March, would be cooled by the temp- 
tations, by the suspense, by the want and suffering which it 
was feared would stalk from the Atlantic to the valley of 

26 



402 ^*H^ER THE FLAG. 

the Mississippi. We were afraid tlie government would 
wait too long, and find at last, that, instead of a united 
people, thej were deserted, and left alone to meet the foe. 

All this time, the South knew, recognized, by her own 
knowledge of Constitutional questions, that the govern- 
ment could not advance one inch towards acknowledging 
secession ; that when Abraham Lincoln swore to support 
the Constitution and laws of the United States, he was 
bound to die under the flag on Fort Sumter, if necessary. 
[Loud applause.] They knew, therefore, that the call on 
the administration to acknowledge the Commissioners of 
the Confederacy was a delusion and a swindle. I know 
the whole argument for secession. Up to a certain ex- 
tent, I accede to it. But no administration that is not 
traitor can acknowledge secession until we are hopelessly 
beaten in fair fight. [Cheers.] The right of a State to 
secede, under the Constitution of the United States, — it is 
an absurdity ; and Abraham Lincoln knows nothing, has a 
right to know nothing, but the Constitution of the United 
States. [Loud cheers.] The right of a State to secede, 
as a revolutionary right, is undeniable ; but it is the nation 
which is to recognize that ; and the nation offered, at the 
suggestion of Kentucky, to meet the question in full con- 
vention. The offer was declined. The government and 
the nation, therefore, are all right. [Applause.] They 
are right on constitutional law ; they are right on the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence. [Cheers.] 

Let me explain this more fully, for this reason ; because 
— and I thank God for it, every American should be 
proud of it — you cannot maintain a war in the United 
States of America against a constitutional or a revolution- 
ary right. The people of these States have too large brains 
and too many ideas to fight blindly, — to lock horns like a 
couple of beasts in the sight of the world. [Applause.] 
Cannon think in tliis nineteenth century ; and you must 



UNDER THE FLAG. 408 

put the North in the right, — wholly, undeniably, in- 
side of the Constitution and out of it, — before you can 
justify her in the face of the world ; before you can pour 
Massachusetts like an avalanche through the streets of 
Bahimore, [great cheering,] and carry Lexington on the 
19th of April south of Masofi and Dixon's line. [Re- 
newed cheering.] Let us take an honest pride in the 
fact that our Sixth Regiment made a way for itself 
through Baltimore, and were the first to reach the threat- 
ened Capital. In this war Massachusetts has a right to be 
the first in the field. 

I said I knew the whole argument for secession. Very 
briefly let me state the points. No government provides 
for its own death ; therefore there can be no constitutional 
right to secede. But there is a revolutionary right. The 
Declaration of Independence establishes, what the heart 
of every American acknoAvledges, that the people — mark 
you, THE people! — have always an inherent, paramount, 
inalienable rio;ht to change their o-overnments, whenever 
they think — whenever they think — that it will minister 
to their happiness. That is a revolutionary right. Now, 
how did South Carolina and Massachusetts come into the 
Union ? They came into it by a convention representing 
the people. South Carolina alleges that she has gone out 
by convention. So far, right. She says that w^hen the 
people take the State rightfully out of the Union, the right 
to forts and national property goes with it. Granted. She 
says, also, that it is no matter that we bought Louisiana of 
France, and Florida of Spain. No bargain made, no money 
paid, betwixt us and France or Spain, could rob Florida or 
Louisiana of her right to remodel her government when- 
ever the people found it would be for their happiness. So 
far, right. The people, — mark you ! South Carolina 
presents herself to the administration at Washington, and 
says, " There is a vote of my convention, that I go out of 



404 ^>UDER THE FLAG. 

the Union." " I cannot see you," says Abraham Lmcoln. 
[Loud cheers.] " As President, I have no eyes but con- 
stitutional eyes ; I cannot see you." [Renewed cheers.] 
ITe could only say, like Speaker Lenthal before Charles the 
First, " I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak but 
as the Constitution is pleased to direct me, whose servant I 
am." He was right. But Madison said, Hamilton said, 
the Fathers said, in 1789, " No man but an enemy of lib- 
erty will ever stand on technicalities and forms, when the 
essence is in question." Abraham Lincoln could not see 
the Commissioners of South Carolina, but the North could; 
the nation could ; and the nation responded, " If you want 
a Constitutional secession, such as you claim, but which I 
repudiate, I will waive forms : let us meet in convention, 
and we will arrange it." [Applause.] Surely, while one 
claims a right within the Constitution, he may, without 
dishonor or inconsistency, meet in convention, even if 
finally refusing to be bound by it. To decline doing so 
is only evidence of intention to provoke war. Everything 
under that instrument is peace. Eveiything under that 
instrument may be changed by a national convention. 
The South says, " No ! " She says, " If you don't allow 
me the Constitutional right, I claim the revolutionary 
right." The North responds, " When you have torn the 
Constitution into fragments, I recognize the right of the 
PEOPLE of South Carolina to model their government. 
Yes, I recognize the right of the three hundred and 
eighty-four thousand white men, and four hundred and 
eighty-four thousand black men to model their Constitu- 
tion. Show me one that they have adopted, and I will 
recognize the revolution. [Cheers.] But the moment 
"v ou tread outside of the Constitution, the black man is 
not three fifths of a man, — he is a whole one." [Loud 
cheering.] Yes, the South has the right of revolution ; 
the South has a right to model her government ; and the 



UNDER THE FLAG. 405 

moment she shows us four milKon of black votes thrown 
even against it, and balanced by five million of other 
votes, I will acknowledge the Declaration of Independence 
is complied with [loud applause], — that the people 
south of Mason and Dixon's line have remodelled their 
' government to suit , themselves ; and our function is 
only to recognize it. 

Further than this, we should have the right to remind 
them, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, 
that "governments long established are not to be changed 
for light and transient causes," and that, so long as gov- 
ernment fulfils the purposes for which it was made, — the 
liberty and happiness of the people, — no one section has 
the right capriciously to make changes which destroy joint 
interests, advantages bought by common toil and sacrifice, 
and which division necessarily destroys. Indeed, we should 
have the right to remind them that no faction, in what has 
been recognized as one nation, can claim, by any law, the 
right of revolution to set up or to preserve a system 
which the common conscience of mankind stamps as wicked 
and infamous. The law of nations is only another name 
for the common sense and average conscience of mankind. 
It does not allow itself, like a county court, to be hood- 
winked by parchments or confused by technicalities. In 
its vocabulary, the right of revolution means the right of 
the people to protect themselves, not the privilege of ty- 
rants to tread under foot good laws, and claim the world's 
sympathy in riveting weakened chains. 

I say the North had a right to assume these positions. 
She did not. She had a right to ignore revolution until 
these conditions were complied with ; but she did not. 
She waived it. In obedience to the advice of Madison, to 
the long history of her country's forbearance, to the mag- 
nanimity of nineteen States, she waited ; she advised the 
government to wait. Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural, indi* 



406 Binder the flag. 

cated that this would be the wise course. Mr. Seward 
hinted it in his speech in New York. The London Times 
bade us remember the useless war of 1776, and take warn- 
ing against resisting the principles of popular sovereignty. 
The Tribune, whose unflinching fidelity and matchless 
ability make it in this fight " the white plume of Na-' 
varre," has again and again avowed its readiness to waive 
forms and go into convention. We have waited. We 
said, "Anything for peace." We obeyed the magnani- 
mous statesmanship of John Quincy Adams. Let me 
read you his advice, given at the " Jubilee of the Consti- 
tution," to the New York Historical Society, in the year 
1839. He says, recognizing this right of the people of a 
State, — mark you, not a State: the Constitution in this 
matter knows no States ; the right of revolution knows no 
States : it knows only the people. Mr. Adams says : — 

" The PEOPLE of each State in the Union have a right 
to secede from the confederated Union itself. 

" Thus stands the right. But the indissoluble link of 
union between the people of the several States of this 
confederated nation is, after all, not in the rights but in 
the heart. 

" If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it !) 
when the affections of the people of these States shall be 
alienated from each other, when the fraternal spirit shall 
give way to cold incHfference, or collisions of interest shall 
fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not 
long hold together parties no longer attracted by the mag- 
netism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies ; and 
far better will it be for the people of the disunited States 
to part in friendship from each other, than to be held to- 
gether by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting 
to the precedents which occurred at the formation and 
adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect 
union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind ; and 



UNDER THE FLAG. 407 

to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of 
political gravitation to the centre." 

The North said " Amen " to every word of it. They 
waited. They begged the States to meet them. They 
were silent when the cannon-shot pierced the flag of the 
Star of the West. They said " Amen " when the govern- 
ment offered to let nothing but the bunting cover Fort 
Sumter. They said "Amen" when Lincoln stood alone, 
without arms, in a defenceless Capital, and trusted him- 
self to the loyalty and forbearance of thirty-four States. 

The South, if the truth be told, cannot wait. Like all 
usurpers, they dare not give time for the people to criticise 
their power. War and tumult must conceal the irregular- 
ity of their civil course, and smother discontent and criti- 
cism at the same time. Besides, bankruptcy at home can 
live out its short term of possible existence only by con- 
quest on land and piracy at sea. And, further, only by 
war, by appeal to popular frenzy, can they hope to delude 
the Border States to join them. War is the breath of 
their life. 

To-day, therefore, the question is, by the voice of the 
South, " Shall Washington or Montgomery own the con- 
tinent ? " And the North says, " From the Gulf to the 
Pole, the Stars and Stripes shall atone to four millions of 
negroes whom we have forgotten for seventy years ; and, 
before you break the Union, we will see that justice is 
done to the slave." [Enthusiastic and long-continued 
cheers.] 

There is only one thing those cannon-shot in the har- 
bor of Charleston settled, — that there never can be a 
compromise. [Loud applause.] We Abolitionists have 
doubted whether this Union really meant justice and lib- 
erty. We have doubted the intention of nineteen mil- 
lions of people. They have said, in answer to our criti- 
cism : " We believe that the Fathers meant to estabh?b 



408 ^^^UNDER THE FLAG. 

justice. We believe that there are hidden in the armory 
of the Constitution weapons strong enough to secure it. 
We are wilHng yet to try tbe experiment. Grant us 
time." We have doubted, derided the pretence, as we 
supposed, louring these long and weary weeks we have 
waited to hear the Northern conscience assert its purpose. 
It comes at last. [An impressive pause.] Massachusetts 
blood has consecrated the pavements of Baltimore, and 
those stones are now too sacred to be trodden by slaves , 
[Loud cheers.] 

You and I owe it to those young martyrs, you and I owe 
it, that their blood shall be the seed of no mere empty tri- 
umph, but that the negro shall teach his children 'to bless 
them for centuries to come. [Applause.] When Massa- 
chusetts goes down to that Carolhia fort to put the Stars 
and Stripes again over its blackened walls [enthusiasm], 
she will sweep from its neighborhood every institution 
which hazards their ever bowing again to the palmetto. 
[Loud cheers.] All of you may not mean it now. Our 
fathers did not think in 1775 of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. The Long Parliament never thought of the 
scaffold of Charles the First, when they entered on the 
struggle ; but having begun, they made thorough work. 
[Cheers.] It is an attribute of the Yankee blood, — 
slow to fight, and fight once. [Renewed cheers.] It 
was a holy war, that for Independence : tliis is a holier 
and the last, — that for Liberty. [Loud applause.] 

I hear a great deal about Constitutional liberty. The 
mouths of Concord and Lexington guns have room only 
for one word, and that is Liberty. You might as well 
ask Niagara to chant the Chicago Platform, as to say how 
far war shall jro. War and Niaojara thunder to a music of 
their own. God alone can launch the lightnings, that they 
may go and say. Here we are. The thunderbolts of His 
throne always abase the proud, lift up the lowly, and exe' 
cute justice between man and man. 



UNDEE THE FLAG. 409 

Now let me turn one moment to another consideration. 
What should the government do ? I said " thorough " 
should be its maxim. When we fight, we are fighting for 
justice and an idea. A short war and a rigid one is the 
maxim. Ten thousand men in Washington ! it is only a 
bloody fight. Five hundred thousand men in Washington, 
and none dare come there but from the North. [Loud 
cheers.] Occupy St. Louis with the millions of the West, 
and say to Missouri, " You cannot go out ! " [Applause.] 
Cover Maryland with a million of the friends of the ad- 
ministration, and say : " We must have our capital within 
reach. [Cheers.] If you need compensation for slaves 
taken from you in the convulsion of battle, here it is. 
[Cheers.] Government is engaged in the fearful struggle 
to show that '89 meant justice, and there is something 
better than life, holier than even real and just property, 
in such an hour as this." And again, we must remember 
another thing, — the complication of such a struggle as 
this. Bear with me a moment. We put five hundred 
thousand men on the banks of the Potomac. Virginia is 
held by two races, white and black. Suppose those black 
men flare in our faces the Declaration of Independence. 
What are we to say ? Are we to send Northern bayonets 
to keep slaves under the feet of Jefferson Davis ? [Many 
voices, " No ! " " Never ! "] In 1842, Governor Wise 
of Virginia, the symbol of the South, entered into argu- 
ment with Quincy Adams, who carried Plymouth Rock to 
Washington. [Applause.] It was when Joshua Gid- 
dings offered his resolution stating his constitutional doc- 
trine that Congress had no right to interfere, in any event, 
in any way, with the slavery of the Southern States. 
Plymouth Rock refused to vote for it. Mr. Adams said 
(substantially) : " If foreign war comes, if civil war comes, 
if insurrection comes, is this beleaguered capital, is this 
besieged government, to see milhons of its subjects in arms. 



410 Sunder the flag. 

and have no right to break the fetters which they are 
forging into swords ? No ; the war power of the govern- 
ment can sweep this institution into the Gulf." [Cheers.] 
Ever since 1842, that statesman-like claim and warning 
of the North has been on record, spoken by the lips of 
her wisest son. [Applause.] 

When the South cannonaded Fort Sumter the bones 
of Adams stirred in his coffin. [Cheers.] And you 
might have heard him, from that granite grave at Quincy, 
proclaim to the nation : " The hour has struck ! Seize 
the thunderbolt God has forged for you, and annihilate 
the system which has troubled your peace for seventy 
years ! " [Cheers.] Do not say this is a cold-blooded 
suggestion. I hardly ever knew slavery go down in any 
other circumstances. Only once, in the broad sweep of 
the world's history, was any nation lifted so high that she 
could stretch her imperial hand across the Atlantic, and 
lift by one peaceful word a million of slaves into liberty. 
God granted that glory only to our mother-land. 

You heedlessly expected, and we Ab9litionists hoped, 
that such would be our course. Sometimes it really 
seemed so, and we said confidently, the age of bullets is 
over. At others the sky lowered so darkly that we felt 
our only exodus would be one of blood ; that, like other 
nations, our Bastile would fall only before revolution. 
Ten years ago I asked you. How did French slavery go 
down ? How did the French slave-trade go down ? 
When Napoleon came back from Elba, when his fate 
hung trembling in the balance, and he wished to gather 
around him the sympathies of the liberals of Europe, he 
no sooner set foot in the Tuileries than he signed the 
edict abolishino; the slave-trade, ao;ainst which the Aboli- 
tionists of England and France had protested f)r twenty 
years in vain. And the trade went down, because Napo- 
leon felt he must do something to gild the darkening 



UNDER THE FLAG. 411 

hour of his second attempt to clutch the sceptre of France. 
How did the slave system go down ? When, In 1848, the 
Provisional Government found itself in the Hotel de Ville, 
obliged to do something to draw to itself the sympathy 
and liberal feeling of the French nation, they signed an 
edict — it was the first from the rising republic — abolish- 
ing the death-penalty and slavery. The storm which 
rocKcd the vessel of state almost to foundering snapped 
forever the chain of the French slave. Look, too, at the 
history of Mexican and South American emancipation ; 
you will find that it was in every instance, I think, the 
child of convulsion. 

That hour has come to us. So stand we to-day. The 
Abolitionist who will not now cry, when the moment 
serves, " Up, boys, and at them ! " is false to liber- 
ty. [Great cheering. A voice, " So is every other 
man."] Yes, to-day Abolitionist is merged in citizen, — 
in American. Say not it is a hard lesson. Let him who 
fully knows his own heart and strength, and feels, as he 
looks down into his child's cradle, that he could stand and 
see that little nestling borne to slavery, and submit, — let 
him cast the first stone. But all you, whose blood is wont 
to stir over Naseby and Bunker Hill, will hold your peace, 
unless you are ready to cry with me, — Sic semper tyran- 
nis ! "So may it ever be with tyrants ! " [Loud ap- 
plause.] 

Why, Americans, I believe in the might of nineteen 
millions of people. Yes, I know that what sewing-ma- 
chines and reaping-machines and ideas and types and 
school-houses cannot do, the muskets of Illinois and Mas- 
sachusetts can finish up. [Cheers.] Blame me not that 
I make everything turn on liberty and the slave. I be- 
lieve in Massachusetts. I know that free speech, free toil, 
Bchool-houses, and ballot-boxes are a pyramid on its broad* 
est base. Nothing that does not sunder the solid globe can 



412 ^NDER THE FLAG. 

disturb it. We defy the world to disturb us. [Cheers.] 
The little errors that dwell upon our surface, we have 
medicine in our institutions t(5 cure them all. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Therefore there is nothino; left for a New Enolana 
man, nothing but that he shall wipe away the stain which 
hanfijs about the toleration of human bondage. As Web- 
ster said at Rochester, years and years ago : " If I thought 
that there was a stain upon the remotest hem of the gar- 
ment of my country, I would devote my utmost labor to 
wipe it oflp." [Cheers.] To-day that call is made upon 
Massachusetts. That is the reason why I dwell so much 
on the slavery question. I said I believed in the power 
of the North to conquer ; but where does she get it. I do 
not believe in the power of the North to subdue two mil- 
lions and a half of Southern men, unless she summons jus- 
tice, the negro, and God to her side [cheers] ; and in that 
battle we are sure of this, — we are sure to rebuild the 
Union down to the Gulf. [Renewed cheering.] In that 
battle, with that watch^vord, with those allies, the thirteen 
States and their children will survive, — in the light of the 
world, a nation which has vindicated the sincerity of the 
Fathers of '87, that they bore children, and not pedlers, to 
represent them in the nineteenth century. [Repeated 
cheers.] But without that, — without that, I know also 
we shall conquer. Sumter annihilated compromise. Noth- 
ing but victory will blot from history that sight of the Stars 
and Stripes giving place to the palmetto. But without 
justice for inspiration, without God for our ally, we shall 
break the Union asunder; we shall be a confederacy, 
and so will they. This war means one of two things, — 
Emancipation or Disunion. [Cheers.] Out of the smoke 
of the conflict there comes that, — nothing else. It is im- 
possible there should come anything else. Now, I believe 
in the future and permanent union of the races that cover 



UNDER THE FLAG. 413 

this continent from the pole down to the Gulf. One in 
race, one in history, one in religion, one in industry, one 
in thought, we never can be permanently separated. 
Your path, if you foi-get the black race, will be over the 
gulf of Disunion, — years of unsettled, turbulent, Mexican 
and South American civilization, back through that desert 
of forty years to the Union which is sure to come. 

But I believe in a deeper conscience, I believe in a 
North more educated than that. I divide you into four 
sections. The first is the ordinary mass, rushing from 
mere enthusiasm to 

" A battle whose great aim and scope 
They little care to know, 
Content, like men-at-arms, to cope 
Each with his fronting foe." 

Behind that class stands another, whose only idea in 
this controversy is sovereignty and the flag. The sea- 
board, the wealth, the just-converted hunkerism of the 
country, fill that class. Next to it stands the third ele- 
ment, the people ; the cordwainers of Lynn, the farmers 
of Worcester, the dwellers on the prairie, — Iowa and 
Wisconsin, Ohio and Maine, — the broad surface of the 
people who have no leisure for technicalities, who never 
studied law, who never had time to read any further into 
the Constitution than the first two lines, — " Establish 
Justice and secure Liberty. ^^ They have waited long 
enough ; they have eaten dirt enough ; they have apolo- 
gized for bankrupt statesmen enough ; they have quieted 
their consciences enough ; they have split logic with their 
Abolition neighbors long enough ; they are tired of trying 
to find a place between the forty-ninth and forty-eighth 
corner of a constitutional hair [laughter] ; and now that 
they have got their hand on the neck of a rebellious aris- 
tocracy, in the name of the people, they mean to strangle 
it. That I believe is the body of the people itself. Sido 



414 '■"^4ifDER THE FLAG. 

by side with them stands a fourth class, — small, but active, 
— the Abolitionists, who thank God that he has let them 
see his salvation before they die. , [Cheers.] 

The noise and dust of the conflict may hide the real 
question at issue. Europe may think, some of us may, 
that we are fighting for forms and parchments, for sover- 
eignty and a flag. But really the war is one of opinions : 
it is Civilization ao-ainst Barbarism : it is Freedom ao;ainst 
Slavery. The cannon-shot against Fort Sumter was the 
yell of pirates against the Declaration of Independence ; 
the war-cry of the North is the echo of that sublime 
pledge. The South, defying Christianity, clutches its vic- 
tim. The North offers its wealth and blood in glad atone- 
ment for the selfishness of seventy years. The result is as 
sure as the throne of God. I believe in the possibility of 
justice, in the certainty of union. Years hence, when 
the smoke of this conflict clears away, the world will see 
under our banner all tongues, all creeds, all races, — one 
brotherhood, — and on the banks of the Potomac, the 
Genius of Liberty, robed in light, four and thirty stars for 
her diadem, broken chains under feet, and an olive-branch 
in her right hand. [Great applause.] 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION.* 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It would be impossj- 
ble for me fitly to thank you for this welcome ; you 
will allow me, therefore, not to attempt it, but to avail 
myself of your patience to speak to you,, as I have been 
invited to do, upon the war. 

I know. Ladies and Gentlemen, that actions — deeds, 
not words — are the .fitting duty of the hour. Yet, still, 
cannon think in this day of ours, and it is only by putting 
thought behind arms that we render them worthy, in any 
degree, of the civilization of the nineteenth century. [Ap- 
plause.] Besides, the government has two thirds of a 
million of soldiers, and it has ships sufficient for its pur- 
pose. The only question seems to be, what the govern- 
ment is to do with these forces, — in what path, and how 
far it shall tread. You and I come here to-night, not to 
criticise, not to find fault with the Cabinet. We come 
here to recognize the fact, that in moments like these the 
statesmanship of the Cabinet is but a pine shingle upon the 
rapids of Niagara, borne which way the great popular 
heart and the national purpose du'ect. It is in vain now, 
with these scenes about us, in this crisis, to endeavor to 
create public opinion ; too late now to educate twenty 
millions of people. Our object now is to concentrate and 
to manifest, to make evident and to make intense, the ma- 
tured purpose of the nation. We are to show the world, 
♦ Lecture delivered in New York and Boston, December, 1861. 



416 ra^iu 



R FOR THE UNION. 



if it be indeed so, that democratic institutions are strong 
enough for such an hour as this. Very terrible as is the 
conspiracy, momentous as is thev peril. Democracy wel- 
comes the struggle, confident that she stands like no deli- 
cately-poised throne in the Old World, but, like the Pyra- 
mid, on its broadest base, able to be patient with national 
evils, — generously patient with the long forbearance of 
three generations, — and strong enough when, after that 
they reveal themselves in their own inevitable and hideous 
proportions, to pronounce and execute the unanimous ver- 
dict, — Death ! 

Now, Gentlemen, it is in such a spirit, with such a pur- 
pose, that I come before you to-night to sustain this war. 
Whence came this war ? You and I need not curiously 
investigate. While Mr. Everett on one side, and Mr. 
Sumner on the other, agree, you and I may take for 
granted the opinion of two such opposite statesmen, — the 
result of the common sense of this side of the water and 
the other, — that slavery is the root of this w^ar. [Ap- 
plause.] I know some men have loved to trace it to dis- 
appointed ambition, to the success of the Republican party, 
convincing three hundred thousand nobles at the South, 
who have hitherto furnished us the most of the presidents, 
generals, judges, and ambassadors we needed, that they 
would have leave to stay at home, and that twenty millions 
of Northerners would take their share in public affairs. I 
do not think that cause equal to the result. Other men be- 
fore Jefferson Davis and Governor Wise have been disap- 
pointed of the Presidency. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, 
and Stephen A. Douglas were more than once disappointed, 
and yet who believes that either of these great men could 
have armed the North to avenge his wrongs ? Why, then, 
should these pigmies of the South be able to do what the 
giants I have named could never achieve ? Simply be- 
cause there is a radical difference between the two sec- 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 417 

tions, and that difference is slavery. A party victory may 
have been the occasion of this outbreak. So a tea-chest 
was tlie occasion of the Revolution, and it went to the 
bottom of Boston harbor on the night of the 16th of De- 
cember, 1773 ; but that tea-chest was not the cause of the 
Revolution, neither is Jefferson Davis the cause of the re- 
bellion. If you will look upon the map, and notice that 
every Slave State has joined or tried to join the rebellion, 
and no Free State has done so, I think you will not doubt 
substantially the origin of this convulsion. 

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, you know me — those of 
you who know me at all — simply as an Abolitionist. I 
am proud and glad that you should have known me as 
such. In the twenty-five years that are gone, — I say it 
with no wish to offend any man before me, — but in the 
quarter of a century that has passed, I could find no place 
where an American could stand with decent self-respect, 
except in constant, uncontrollable, and loud protest against 
the sin of his native land. But, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
do not imagine that I come here to-night to speak simply 
and exclusively as an Abolitionist. My interest in this 
war, simply and exclusively as an Abolitionist, is about as 
much gone as yours in a novel where the hero has won 
the lady, and the marriage has been comfortably celebrated 
in the last chapter. I know the danger of political prophe- 
cy, — a kaleidoscope of which not even a Yankee can guess 
the next combination, — but for all that, I venture to offer 
my opinion, that on this continent the system of domestic 
slavery has received its death-blow. [Loud and long-con- 
tinued applause.] Let me tell you why I think so. Leav- 
ing out of view war with England, which I do not expect, 
Lx.ere are but three paths out of this war. One is, the 
North conquers ; the other is, the South conquers ; and 
the third is, a compromise. Now, if the North conquers, 
or there be a compromise, one or the other of two things 

27 



418 THE win FOR THE UNION. 

must come, — either the old Constitution or a new one. I 
beheve that, so far as the slavery clauses of the Constitution 
of '89 are concerned, it is dead. It §eems to me impossible 
that the thrifty and painstaking North, after keeping six 
hundred thousand men idle for two or three years, at a cost 
of two million dollars a day ; after that flag lowered at 
Sumter ; after Baker and Lyon and Ellsworth and Win- 
throp and Putnam and Wesselhoeft have given their lives 
to quell the rebellion ; after our Massachusetts boys, hur- 
rying from ploughed field and workshop to save the capital, 
have been foully murdered on the pavements of Baltimore, 
— I cannot believe in a North so lost, so craven, as to put 
back slavery where it stood on the 4th of March last. 
[Cheers.] But if there be reconstruction without those 
slave clauses, then in a little while, longer or shorter, slav- 
ery dies, — indeed, on any other basis but the basis of 
'89, she has nothing else now to do but to die. On the 
contrary, if the South — no, I cannot say conquers — my 
lips will not form that word — but if she balks us of vic- 
tory, the only way she can do it is to write Emancipation 
on her own banner, and thus bribe the friends of liberty 
in Europe to allow its aristocrats and traders to divide the 
majestic republic whose growth and trade they fear and 
envy. Either way, the slave goes free. Unless England 
flings her fleets along the coast, the South can never spring 
into separate existence, except from the basis of negro 
freedom ; and I for one cannot yet believe that the North 
will consent again to share his chains. Exclusively as an 
Abolitionist, therefore, I have little more interest in this 
war than the frontiersman's wife had in his strug(]jle with 
the bear, when she did n't care which whipped. But be- 
fore I leave the Abolitionists, let me say one word. Some 
men say we are the cause of this war. Gentlemen, you 
do us too much honor ! If it be so, we have reason to be 
proud of it ; for in my heart, as an American, I believe 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 419 

this year the most glorious of the Republic since '76. 
The North, craven and contented until now, like Mam- 
mon, saw nothing even in heaven but the golden pave- 
ment ; to-day she throws off her chains. We have a 
North, as Daniel Webster said. This is no epoch for 
nations to blush at. England might blush in 1620, when 
Englishmen trembled at a fool's frown, and were silent 
when James forbade them to think ; but not in 1649, 
when an outraged people cut off his son's head. Massa- 
chusetts might have blushed a year or two ago, when an 
insolent Virginian, standing on Bunker Hill, insulted the 
Commonwealth, and then dragged her citizens to Wash- 
ington to tell what they knew about John Brown ; but 
she has no reason to blush to-day, when she holds that 
same impudent Senator an acknowledged felon in her 
prison-fort. In my view, the bloodiest war ever waged 
is infinitely better than the happiest slavery which ever 
fattened men into obedience. And yet I love peace. 
But it is real peace ; not peace such as we have had ; 
not peace that meant lynch-law in the Carolinas and mob- 
law in New York ; not peace that meant chains around 
Boston Court-House, a gag on the lips of statesmen, and 
the slave sobbing himself to sleep in curses. No more 
such peace for me ; no peace that is not born of justice, 
and does not recognize the rights of every race and every 
man. 

Some men say they would view this war as white men. 
I condescend to no such narrowness. I view it as an 
American citizen, proud to be the citizen of an empire 
that knows neither black nor white, neither Saxon nor 
Indian, but holds an equal sceptre over all. [Loud 
cheers.] If I am to love my country, it must be lovable ; 
if I am to honor it, it must be worthy of respect. What 
is the function God gives us, — what is the breadth of re- 
sponsibility he lays upon us ? An empire, the home of 



420 THEW5l* 



FOR THE UNION. 



every race, every creed, every tongue, to whose citizens 
is committed, if not the only, then the grandest system of 
pure self-government. Tocqueville tells us that all na- 
tions and all ages tend with inevitable certainty to this 
result ; but he points out, as history does, this land as the 
normal school of the nations, set by God to try the experi- 
ment of popular education and popular government, to 
remove the obstacles, point out the dangers, find the best 
way, encourage the timid, and hasten the world's progress. 
Let us see to it, that with such a crisis and such a past, 
neither the ignorance, nor the heedlessness, nor the cow- 
ardice of Americans forfeits this high honor, won for us by 
the toils of two generations, given to us by the blessing of 
Providence. It is as a citizen of the leading; State of this 
Western continent, vast in territory, and yet its territory 
nothing when compared with the grandeur of its past and 
the majesty of its future, — it is as such a citizen that I 
wish, for one, to find out my duty, express as an indi- 
vidual my opinion, and aid thereby the Cabinet in doing 
its duty under such responsibility. It does not lie in one 
man to ruin us, nor in one man to save us, nor in a dozen. 
It lies in the twenty millions, in the thirty millions, of 
thirty-four States. 

Now how do we stand? In a war, — not only that, 
but a terrific war, — not a war sprung from the caprice 
of a woman, the spite of a priest, the flickering ambition 
of a prince, as wars usually have ; but a war inevitable ; 
in one sense, nobody's fault ; the inevitable result of past 
training, the conflict of ideas, millions of people grappling 
each other's throats, every soldier in each camp certain 
that he is ficrhtino; for an idea which holds the salvation 
of the world, — every drop of his blood in earnest. Such 
a war finds no parallel nearer than that of the Catholic 
and the Huguenot of France, or that of Aristocrat and 
Repubhcan in 1790, or of Cromwell and the Irish, when 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 421 

Victory meant extermination. Such is our war. I look 
upon it as the commencement of the great struggle be- 
tween the disguised aristocracy and the democracy of 
America. You are to say to-day whether it shall last ten 
years or seventy, as it usually has done. It resembles 
closely that struggle between aristocrat and democrat 
which began in France in 1T89, and continues still. 
"While it lasts, it will have the same effect on the nation 
as that war between blind loyalty, represented by the 
Stuart family, and the free spirit of the English Constitu- 
tion, which lasted from 1660 to 1760, and kept England 
a second-rate power almost all that century. 

Such is the era on which you are entering. I will not 
speak of war in itself, — I have no time ; I will not say, 
with Napoleon, that it is the practice of barbarians ; I will 
not say that it is good. It is better than the past. A 
thing may be better^ and yet not good. This war is better 
than the past, but there is not an element of good in it, 
I mean, there is nothing in it which we might not ha\e 
gotten better, fuller, and more perfectly in other ways. 
And yet it is better than the craven past, infinitely better 
than a peace which had pride for its father and subser- 
viency for its mother. Neither will I speak of the cost of 
war, although you know that we never shall get out of this 
one without a debt of at least two or three thousand mil- 
lions of dollars. For if the prevalent theory prove correct, 
and the country comes together again on anything like the 
old basis, we pay Jeff Davis's debts as well as our own. 
Neither vnW I remind you that debt is the fatal disease of 
republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine 
government and corrupt the people. The great debt of 
England has kept her back in civil progress at least a 
hundred years. Neither will I remind you that, when we 
go out of this war, we go out with an immense disbanded 
army, an intense military spirit embodied in two thirds of 



422 THL 1W FOR THE UNION. 

a million of soldiers, the fruitful, the inevitable source 
of fresh debts and new wars. I pass by all that ; yet lying 
within those causes are things enough to make the most 
sanguine friends of free institutions tremble for our future. 
I pass those by. But let me remind you of, another ten- 
dency of the time. You know, for instance, that the writ 
of habeas corpus^ by which government is bound to render 
a reason to the judiciary before it lays its hands upon a 
citizen, has been called the high- water mark of English lib- 
erty. Jefferson, in his calm moments, dreaded the power 
to suspend it in any emergency whatever, and wished to 
have it in "eternal and unremitting force." The present 
Napoleon, in his treatise on the English Constitution, calls 
it the gem of English institutions. Lieber says that habeas 
corpus^ free meetings like this, and a free press, are the 
three elements which distinguish liberty from despotism. 
All that Saxon blood has gained in the battles and toils of 
two hundred years are these three things. But to-day, 
Mr. Chairman, every one of them — habeas corpus^ the 
right of free meeting, and a free press — is annihilated in 
every square mile of the Republic. We live to-day, 
every one of us, under martial law. The Secretary of 
State puts into his bastile, with a warrant as irresponsible 
as that of Louis, any man whom he pleases. And you 
know that neither press nor lips may venture to arraign 
the government without being silenced. At this moment 
one thousand men, at least, are "bastiled" by an authority 
as despotic as that of Louis, — three times as many as 
Eldon and George III. seized when they trembled for his 
throne. Mark me, I am not complaining. I do not say 
it is not necessary. It is necessary to do anything to save 
the shij). [Applause.] It is necessary to throw every- 
thing overboard in order that we may float. It is a mere 
question whether you prefer the despotism of Washington 
or that of Richmond. I prefer that of Washington. [Loud 



THE WAE FOR THE UNION. 423 

applause.] But, nevertheless, I point out to you tliis ten- 
dency, because it is momentous in its significance. We 
are tending with rapid strides, you say inevitahly^ — I do 
not deny it ; necessarily^ — I do not question it ; we are 
tending toward that strong government which frightened 
Jefferson ; toward that unlimited debt, that endless army. 
We have already those alien and sedition laws which, in 
1798, wrecked the Federal party, and summoned the 
Democratic into existence. For the first time on this 
continent we have passports, which even Louis Napoleon 
pronounces useless and odious. For the first time in our 
history government spies frequent our great cities. And 
this model of a strong government, if you reconstruct it on 
the old basis, is to be handed into the keeping of whom ? 
If you compromise it by reconstruction, to whom are you 
to give these delicate and grave powers ? To compro- 
misers. Reconstruct this government, and for twenty 
years you can never elect a Republican. Presidents must 
be so wholly without character or principle, that two 
angry parties, each hopeless of success, contemptuously 
tolerate them as neutrals. Now I am not exa2i:£i[;eratin£j 
the moment. I can parallel it entirely. It is the same 
position that England held in the times of Eldon and Fox, 
when Holcroft and Montgomery, the poet. Home Tooke 
and Frost and Hardy, went into dungeons, under laws 
which Pitt executed and Burke praised, — times when Fox 
said he despaired of English liberty but for the power of 
insurrection, — times which Sidney Smith said he remem- 
bered, when no man was entitled to an opinion who had 
not <£ 3,000 a year. Why I there is no right — do I ex- 
aggerate when I say that there is no single right ? — which 
government is scrupulous and finds itself able to protect, 
except the pretended right of a man to his slaves ! Every 
other rio;ht has fallen now before the necessities of the 
hour. 



424 THE W^ FOR THE UNION. 

Understand me, I do not complain of this state of 
/hings ; but it is momentous. I only ask you, that out of 
this peril you be sure to get something worthy of the crisis 
through which you have passed. No government of free 
make could stand three such trials as this. I only paint 
you the picture, in order, li'KC Hotspur, to say : "Out of 
this nettle, danger, be you right eminently sure that you 
pluck the flower, safety." [Applause.] Standing in 
such a crisis, certainly it commands us that we should 
endeavor to find the root of the difficulty, and that now, 
once for all, we should put it beyond the possibility of 
troubling our peace again. We cannot afford, as Repub- 
licans, to run that risk. The vessel of state, — her tim- 
bers are strained beyond almost the possibility of surviving. 
The tempest is one which it demands the wariest pilot to 
outlive. We cannot afford, thus warned, to omit anything 
which can save this ship of state from a second danger of 
the kind. 

What shall we do ? The answer to that question comes 
partly from what we think has been the cause of this con- 
vulsion. Some men think — some of your editors think 
— many of oui's, too — that this war is nothing. but the 
disappointment of one or two thousand angered politicians, 
who have persuaded eight millions of Southerners, against 
their convictions, to take up arms and rush to the battle- 
field ; — no great compliment to Southern sense ! [Laugh- 
ter.] They think that, if the Federal army could only 
appear in the midst of this demented mass, the eight 
millions will find out for the first time in their lives that 
they have got souls of their own, tell us so, and then we 
shall all be piloted back, float back, drift back into the 
good old times of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. 
[Laughter.] There is a measure of truth in that. I 
believe that if, a year ago, when the thing first showed 
itself, Jefferson Davis and Toombs and Keitt and Wise, 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 425 

and the rest, had been hung for traitors at Washington, 
and a couple of frigates anchored at Charleston, another 
couple in Savannah, and half a dozen in New Orleans, 
with orders to shell those cities on the first note of resist- 
ance, there never would have been this outbreak [ap- 
plause], or it would have been postponed at least a dozen 
years ; and if that interval had been used to get rid of 
slavery, we never should have heard of the convulsion. 
But you know we had nothing of the kind, and the con- 
sequence is, what ? Why, the amazed North has been 
summoned by every defeat and every success, from its 
workshops and its factories, to gaze with wide-opened eyes 
at the lurid heavens, until at last, divided, bewildered, 
confounded, as this twenty millions were, we have all of us 
fused into one idea, that the Union meant justice, — shall 
mean justice, — owns down to the Gulf, and we will have 
it. [Applause.] What has taken place meanwhile at the 
South ? Why, the same thing. The divided, bewildered 
South has been summoned also out of her divisions by 
every success and every defeat (and she has had more of 
the first than we have), and the consequence is, that she 
too is fused into a swelling sea of State pride, hate of 
the North, — 

" Unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit nor yield.'* 

She is in earnest, every man, and she is as unanimous 
as the Colonies were in the Revolution. In fact, the South 
recognizes more intelligibly than we do the necessities of 
her position. I do not consider this a secession. It is no 
secession. I agree with Bishop-General Polk, — it is a 
conspiracy, not a secession. There is no wish, no inten- 
tion to go peaceably and permanently off. It is a con- 
spiracy to make the government do the will and accept 
the policy of the slaveholders. Its root is at the South, 



426 THE WAIT FOR THE UNION. 

but it has many a branch in Wall Street and in State 
Street. [Cheers.] It is a conspiracy, and on the one 
side is every man who still thinks tliat he that steals his 
brother is a gentleman, and he that makes his living is not. 
[Applause.] It is the aristocratic element which survived 
the Constitution, which our fathers thought could be safely 
left under it, and the South to-day is forced into this war 
by the natural growth of the antagonistic principle. You 
may pledge whatever submission and patience of Southern 
institutions you please, it is not enough. South Carolina 
said to Massachusetts in 1835, when Edward Everett was 
Governor, '' Abolish free speech, — it is a nuisance.'* 
She is right, — from her stand-point it is. [Laughter.] 
That is, it is not possible to preserve the quiet of South 
Carolina consistently with free speech ; but you know the 
story Sir AValter Scott told of the Scotch laird, who said 
to his old butler, " Jock, you and I can't live under this 
roof." "And where does your honor think of going?" 
So free speech says to South Carolina to-day. Now I say 
you may pledge, compromise, guarantee what you please. 
The South well knows that it is not your purpose, — it is 
your character she dreads. It is tlie nature of Northern 
institutions, the perilous freedom of discussion, the flavor 
of our ideas, the sight of our growth, the very neighbor- 
hood of such States, that constitutes the danger. It is 
like the two vases launched on the stormy sea. The iron 
said to the crockery, '' I won't come near you." " Thaidv 
you," said the weaker vessel ; " there is just as much 
danger in my coming near you." This the South feels ; 
hence her determination ; hence, indeed, the imperious 
necessity that she should rule and shape our government, 
or of sailing out of it. I do not mean that she plans to 
take possession of the North, and choose our Northern 
Mayors ; though she has done that in Boston for the last 
dozen years, and here till this fall. But she conspires and 



THE W'AK FOR THE UNION. 427 

aims to control just so much of our policy, trade, offices, 
presses, pulpits, cities, as is sufficient to insure the undis- 
turbed existence of slavery. She conspires with the full 
intent so to mould this government as to keep it what it has 
been for thirty years, according to John Quincy Adams, 

— a plot for the extension and perpetuation of slavery. 
As the world advances, fresh guaranties are demanded. 
The nineteenth century requires sterner gags than the 
eighteenth. Often as the peace of Virginia is in danger, 
you must be willing that a Virginia Mason shall drag your 
citizens to Washington, and imprison them at his pleasure. 
So long as Carolina needs it, you must submit that your 
ships be searched for dangerous passengers, and every 
Northern man lynched. No more Kansas rebellions. It 
is a conflict between the two powers. Aristocracy and 
Democracy, which shall hold this belt of the continent. Yoix 
may live here, New York men, but it must be in submis- 
sion to such rules as the quiet of Carolina requires. That 
is the meaning of the oft-repeated threat to call the roll of 
one's slaves on Bunker Hill, and dictate peace in Faneuil 
Hall, Now, in that fight, I go for the North, — for the 
Union. 

In order to make out this theory of " irrepressible con 
flict," it is not necessary to suppose that every Southerner 
hates every Northerner (as the Atlantic Monthly urges). 
But this much is true : some three hundred thousand slave- 
holders at the South, holding two thousand millions of so- 
called property in their hands, controlling the blacks, and 
befooling the seven millions of poor whites into being their 
tools, — into believing that their interest is opposed to ours, 

— this order of nobles, this privileged class, has been able 
for forty years to keep the government in dread, dictate 
terms by threatening disunion, bring us to its verge at 
least twice, and now almost to break the Union in pieces. 
A power thus consolidated, which has existed seventy 



428 THE wli^ 



FOE THE UNION. 



years, setting up and pulling down parties, controlling the 
policy of the government, and changing our religion, and 
is emboldened by uniform success, will not burst like a 
bubble in an hour. For all practical purposes, it is safe 
to speak of it as the South ; no other South exists, or will 
exist, till our policy develops it into being. This is what 
I mean. An aristocracy rooted in wealth, with its net- 
work spread over all social life, its poison penetrating 
every fibre of society, is the hardest possible evil to de- 
stroy. Its one influence. Fashion, is often able to mock 
at Religion, Trade, Literature, and Politics combined. 
One half the reason why Washington has been and is in 
peril, — why every move is revealed and checkmated, — 
is that your President is unfashionable, and Mrs. Jefferson 
Davis is not. Unseen chains are sometimes stronger than 
those of iron, and heavier than those of gold. 

It is not in the plots, it is in the inevitable character of 
the Northern States, that the South sees her danger. And 
the stru2o:le is between these two ideas. Our fathers, as 
I said, thought they could safely be left, one to outgrow the 
other. They took gunpowder and a lighted match, forced 
them into a stalwart cannon, screwed down the muzzle, 
and thought they could secure peace. But it has resulted 
differently ; their cannon lias exploded, and we stand among 
frao;ments. 

Now some Republicans and some Democrats — not But- 
ler and Bryant and Cochrane and Cameron, not Boutwell 
and Bancroft and Dickinson, and others — but the old set 
— the old set say to the Republicans, " Lay the pieces care- 
fully together in then- places ; put the gunpowder and the 
match in again, say the Constitution backward instead of 
your prayers, and there will never be another rebellion ! " 
I doubt it. It seems to me that like causes will produce 
like effects. If the reason of the war is because Ave are 
two nations, then the cure must be to make us one nation, 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 429 

to remove that cause which divides us, to make our insti- 
tutions homogeneous. If it were possible to subjugate the 
South, and leave slavery just as it is, where is the security 
that we should not have another war in ten years ? In- 
deed, such a course invites another war, whenever dema- 
gogues please. I believe the policy of reconstruction is 
impossible. And if it were possible, it would be the great- 
est mistake that Northern men could commit. [Cheers.] 
I will not stop to remind you that, standing as we do to- 
day, with the full constitutional right to abolish slavery, — 
a right Southern treason has just given us, — a right, the 
use of which is enjoined by tlie sternest necessity, — if, 
after that, the North goes back to the Constitution of '89, 
she assumes, a second time, afresh, unnecessarily, a crimi- 
nal responsibility for slavery. Hereafter no old excuse 
will avail us. A second time, with open eyes, against our 
highest interest, we clasp bloody hands with tyrants to 
uphold an acknowledged sin, whose fell evil we have fully- 
proved. 

But that aside, peace with an unchanged Constitution 
would leave us to stand like Mexico. States married, not 
matched ; chained together, not melted into one ; foreign 
nations aware of our hostility, and interfering to embroil, 
rob, and control us. We should be what Greece was 
under the intrigues of Philip, and Germany when Louis 
XIV. was in fact her dictator. We may see our likeness 
in Austria, every fretful province an addition of weakness ; 
in Italy, twenty years ago, a leash of angry hounds. A 
Union with unwilhng and subjugated States, smarting 
with defeat, and yet holding the powerful and dangerous 
element of slavery in it, and an army disbanded into 
laborers, food for constant disturbance, would be a stand- 
ing invitation to France and England to insult and dictate, 
to thwart our policy, demand changes in our laws, and 
trample on us continually. 



430 THE W'Al^'OR THE UXION. 

Reconstruction is but another name for the submission 
of the North. It is her subjection under a mask. It is 
nothing but the confession of defeat. '•Every merchant, in 
such a case, puts everything he has at the bidding of Wig- 
fall and Toombs in every cross-road bar-room at the 
South. For, you see, never till now did anybody but a 
few Abolitionists beheve that this nation could be mar- 
shalled one section against the other in arms. But the 
secret is out. The weak point is discovered. AVhy does 
the London press lecture us hke a schoolmaster his seven- 
year-old boy ? Why does England use a tone such as 
she has not used for half a century to any power ? Be- 
cause she knows us as she knows Mexico, as all Europe 
knows Austria, — that we have the cancer concealed in 
our very vitals. Slavery, left where it is, after having 
created such a war as this, would leave our commerce and 
all our foreign relations at the mercy of any Keitt, Wig- 
fall, Wise, or Toombs. Any demagogue has only to stir 
up a proslavery crusade, point back to the safe experiment 
of 1861, and lash the passions of the aristocrats, to cover 
the sea with privateers, put in jeopardy the trade of 
twenty States, plunge the country into millions of debt, 
send our stocks down fifty per cent, and cost thousands 
of lives. Reconstruction is but making chronic what now 
is transient. What that is, this week shows. What that 
is, we learn from the tone England dares to assume 
toward this divided republic. I do not believe recon- 
struction possible. I do not believe the Cabinet intend it. 
True, I should care little if they did, since I believe the 
administration can no more resist the progress of events, 
than a spear of grass can retard the step of an avalanche. 
But if they do, allow me to say, for one, that every dollar 
spent in this war is worse than wasted, every life lost is a 
public murder, and that any statesman who leads these 
States back to reconstruction will be damned to an infamy 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 431 

compared with which Arnold was a saint and James Bu- 
chanan a pubhc benefactor. [Shght disturbance in the 
rear part of the hall ; cries of " Put him out ! " etc.] No, 
do not put him out ; his is the very mind I wish to reach. 
I said reconstruction is not possible. I do not believe it is, 
for this reason ; the moment these States begin to appear 
victorious, the moment our armies do anything that 
evinces final success, the wily statesmanship and uncon- 
querable hate of the South will write " Emancipation " on 
her banner, and welcome the protectorate of a European 
power. And if you read the European papers of to-day, 
you need not doubt that she will have it. Intelligent 
men agree that the North stands better with Palmerston 
for minister, than she would with any minister likely to 
succeed him. And who is Palmerston? While he was 
Foreign Secretary, from 1848 to 1851, the British press 
ridiculed every effort of the French Republicans,— 
sneered at Cavaignac and Ledru Rollin, Lamartine and 
Hugo, — while they cheered Napoleon on to his usurpa- 
tion ; and Lord Normanby, then Minister at Paris, early 
in December, while Napoleon's hand was still wet with 
the best blood of France, congratulated the despot on his 
victory over the Reds, applying to the friends of Liberty 
the worst epithet that an Enghshman knows. This last 
outrage lost Palmerston his place ; but he rules to-day, — 
though rebuked, not changed. 

The value of the English news this week is the indica- 
tion of the nation's mind. No one doubts now, that, should 
the South emancipate, England would make haste to recog- 
nize and help her. In ordinary times, the government and 
aristocracy of England dread American example. They 
may well admire and envy the strength of our government, 
when, instead of England's impressment and pinched levies, 
patriotism marshals six hundred thousand volunteers in six 
months. The English merchant is jealous of our growth ; 



432 THE?^l^ FOE THE UNION. 

only the liberal middle classes really sympathize with us. 
"When the two other classes are divided, this middle class 
rules. But now Herod and Pilate a^e agreed. The aris- 
tocrat, who usually despises a trader, whether of Manchester 
or Liverpool, as the South does a negro, now is Secession- 
ist from sympathy, as the trader is fr^om interest. Such 
a union no middle class can checkmate. The only danger 
of war with England is, that, as soon as England declared 
war with us, she would recognize the Southern Confed- 
eracy immediately, just as she stands, slavery and all, as a 
military measure. As such, in the heat of passion, in the 
smoke of war, the English people, all of them, would allow 
such a recognition even of a slaveholding empire. War 
with Enoland insures disunion. When Eno;land declares 
war, she gives slavery a fresh lease of fifty years. Even 
if we have no war with England, let another eio^lit or ten 
months be as little successful as the last, and Europe will 
acknowledge the Southern Confederacy, slavery and all, 
as a matter of course. Further, any approach toward 
victory on our part, without freeing the slave, gives him 
free to Davis. So far, the South is sure to succeed, either 
by victory or defeat, unless we anticipate her. Indeed, 
the only way, the only sure way, to break this Union, is 
to try to save it by protecting slavery. " Every moment 
lost," as Napoleon said, " is an opportunity for misfortune.'* 
Unless we emancipate the slave, we shall never conquer 
the South without her trying emancipation. Every South- 
erner, ft'om Toombs up to Fremont, has acknowledged it. 
Do you suppose that Davis and Beauregard, and the rest, 
mean to be exiles, wandering contemned in every great 
city of Europe, in order that they may maintain slavery 
and the Constitution of '89? They, like ourselves, will 
throw everything overboard before they will submit to 
defeat, — defeat from Yankees. I do not believe, there- 
fore, that reconciliation is possible, nor do I believe the 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 433 

Cabinet have any such hopes. Indeed, I do not know 
where you will find the evidence of any purpose in the 
administration at Washington. [Hisses, cheers, and laugh- 
ter.] If we look to the West, if we look to the Potomac, 
what is the policy ? If, on the Potomac, with the aid of 
twenty Governors, you assemble an army, and do nothing 
but return fugitive slaves, that proves you competent and 
efficient. If, on the banks of the Mississippi, unaided, the 
magic of your presence summons an army into existence, 
and you drive your enemy before you a hundred miles 
farther than your second in command thought it possible 
for you to advance, that proves you incompetent, and 
entitles your second in command to succeed you. [Tre- 
mendous applause, and three cheers for Fremont.] 

Looking in another direction, you see the government 
announcing a policy in South Carolina. What is it? 
Well, Mr. Secretary Cameron says to the general in 
command there : " You are to welcome into your camp all 
comers ; you are to organize them into squads and com- 
panies ; use them any way you please ; — but there is to 
be no general arming." That is a very significant excep- 
tion. The hint is broad enough for the dullest brain. 
In one of Charles Reade's novels, the heroine flies away 
to hide from the hero, announcing that she never shall 
see him again. Her letter says : " I will never see you 
again, David. You, of course, won't come to see me 
at my old nurse's dear little cottage [laughter], be- 
tween eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon, 
because I sha'n't see you." [Laughter.] So Mr. Cam- 
eron says there is to be no general arming, but I suppose 
there is to be a very particular arming. [Laughter.] But 
he goes on to add : " This is no greater interference with 
the institutions of South Carolina than is necessary, — 
than the war will cure." Does he mean he will give the 
slaves back when the war is over ? I don't know. All I 

2b 



404 THE ^m^ FOR THE UNION. 



know is, that the Port Royal expedition proved one thing, 
— it laid forever that ghost of an argument, that the blacks 
loved their masters, — it settled forever the question 
whether the blacks were with us or with the South. My 
opinion is, that the blacks are the key of our position. [A 
Voice, " That is it."] He that gets them wins, and he 
that loses them goes to the wall. [Applause.] Port 
Royal settled one thing, — tJie blacks are with us, and not 
with the South. At present they are the only Unionists. 
I know nothing more touching in history, nothing that art 
will immortalize and poetry dwell upon more fondly, — 1 
knoAV no tribute to the Stars and Stripes more impressive 
than that incident of the blacks coming to the water-side 
with their little bundles, in that simple faith which had 
endured through the long night of so many bitter years. 
They preferred to be shot rather than driven from the 
sight of that banner they had so long prayed to see. And 
if that w^as the result when nothing but General Sherman's 
equivocal proclamation was landed on the Carolinas, what 
should we have seen if there had been eighteen thousand 
veterans with Fremont, the statesman-soldier of this war, 
at their head [loud applause], and over them the Stars 
and Stripes, gorgeous with the motto, " Freedom for all ! 
freedom forever! " If that had gone before them, in my 
opinion they would have marched across the Carolinas, and 
joined Brownlow in East Tennessee. [Applause.] The 
bulwark on each side of them would have been one hun- 
dred thousand grateful blacks ; they would have cut this 
rebellion in halves, and while our fleets fired salutes across 
New Orleans, Beauregard would have been ground to 
powder between the upper millstone of McClellan and 
the lower of a quarter-million of blacks rising to greet the 
Stars and Stripes. [Great cheering.] McClellan may 
drill a better army, — more perfect soldiers. He will 
never marshal a stronger force than those grateful thou- 



THE WAE FOE THE UNION. 435 

sands. That is tlie way to save insurrection. He is an 
enemy to civil liberty, the worst enemy to his own land, 
who asks for such delay or perversion of government 
pohcy as IS sure to result in insurrection. Our duty is to 
save these four millions of blacks from their own passions 
from then- own confusion, and eioht millions of whites 
irom the consequences of it. [" Hear, hear ! "1 And in 
order to do it, we nineteen millions of educated, Christian 
Americans are not to wait for the will or the wisdom of a 
smgle man, -we are not to wait for Fremont or McClel- 
Mn: the government is our dictator. It might do for 
Rome, a herd of beggars and soldiers, kept qui^et only by 
the we,ght of despotism, -it might do for Rome, in'mo^ 
men s of danger, to hurl all responsibility into the hands 
of a dictator. But for us, educated, thoughtful men, with 
msti utions modelled and matured by the experience of two 
hundred years, - it is not for us to evade responsibility by 
deferrmg to a single man. I demand of the government I 
policy I demand of the government to show the doubt- 
mg mfidels of Europe that democracy is not only stronc. 
enough for the trial, but that she breeds men with braint 
arge enough to comprehend the hour, and wills hot enou<.h 
to fuse the purpose of nineteen millions of people into one 
decisive blow for safety and for Union. [Cheers.] You 
will ask me how it is to be done. I would have it done 
by Congress. We have the power. 

When Congress declares war, says John Quincv Adams, 
Congress has all the powers incident to carryin<T'on war 



TT V , c'' " »""'°rity given ,0 Congress by the Constitution of the 

Untied States ,0 a^clare „r, all „,e powers i„ci,e,.lal to .»• are, b/nec 
sary „„phca„.n, conforred npon the yo.«.„„,», of the United State; 
There arc .,vo classes of powers vested by the Constitution of the United 
States ,n the.r Congress and exeeutive government : the powe. to be et 
cuted ,n tttno of peace and the powers incident to war. That the power „f 

but that the powers of war are linti.ed and regulated only by the laws and 



436 THEW??!fc FOR THE UNION. 

It is not an unconstitutional power, — it is a power con- 
ferred by the Constitution ; but the moment it comes into 
play it rises beyond the limit of constitutional checks. I 
know it is a grave power, this trusting the government 
with despotism. But what is the use of government, ex- 
cept just to help us in critical times ? All the checks and 
mgenuity of our institutions are arranged to secure for us 
men wise and able enough to be trusted with grave pow- 
ers, — bold enough to use them Avhen the times require. 
Lancets and knives are dangerous instruments. The use 
of surgeons is, that, when lancets are needed, somebody 
znay know how to use them, and save life. One great 
merit of democratic institutions is, that, resting as they 
must on educated masses, the government may safely be 
trusted, in a great emergency, with despotic power, with- 
out fear of harm, or of wrecking the state. No other 
form of e:overnment can venture such confidence without 

iisap:es of nations, and arc subject to no other limitation I do not 

admit that there is, even among the peace poivers of Congress, no such au- 
thority ; but in icar, there are many ways by Avhich Congress not only have the 
authority, but are bound to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States. 

When the Southern States arc the battle-field between Slavery and 

Emancipation, Congress may sustain the institution by war, or perhaps 
abolish it by treaties of peace ; and they will not only possess the constitu- 
tional power so to interfere, but they will be bound in duty to do it, by the ex- 
press provisions of tlie Constitution itself From the instant the slaveholding; 
States become the theatre of a war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant 
the ivar powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery in 

every way by which it can be interfered icith With a call to keep down 

slaves, in an insui-rection and a civil war, comes a full and plenary power to 
this House and to the Senate over the whole subject. It is a war power. 
Whether it be a war of invasion or a war of insurrection. Congress has 
power to carry on the war, and must carry it on, according to the laws of 
war : and by the laws of war an invaded country has all its laws and muni 
cipal institutions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of them. 
This power in Congress has, perhaps, never been called into exercise under the 
present Constitution of the United States." — Speeches of John Quincy Adami 
in the U. S. House of Representatives, 1836 - 1842. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 437 

risl\ of national ruin. Doubtless the war power is a very 
grave power ; so are some ordinary peace powers. I will 
not cite extreme cases, — Louisiana and Texas. We ob- 
tained the first by treaty, the second by joint resolutions ; 
each case an exercise of power as grave and despotic as 
the abolition of slavery would be, and, unlike that, plainly 
unconstitutional, — one which nothing but stern necessity 
and subsequent acquiescence by the nation could make 
valid. Let me remind you that seventy years' practice 
has incorporated it as a principle in our constitutional law, 
that what the necessity of the hour demands, and the con- 
tinued assent of the people ratifies, is law. Slavery has 
established that rule. We might surely use it in the cause 
of justice. But I will cite an unquestionable precedent. 
It was a grave poAver, in 1807, in time of peace, when 
Congress abolished commerce ; when, by the embargo of 
Jefferson, no ship could quit New York or Boston, and 
Congress set no limit to the prohibition. It annihilated 
commerce. New England asked, ''• Is it constitutional ? '' 
The Supreme Court said, " Yes." New England sat down 
and starved. Her wharves were worthless, her ships rot- 
ted, her merchants beggared. She asked no compensa- 
tion. The powers of Congress carried bankruptcy from 
New Haven to Portland ; but the Supreme Court said, 
" It is legal," and New England bowed her head. We 
commend the same cup to the Carolinas to-day. We say 
to them that, in order to save the government, there re- 
sides somewhere despotism. It is in the war powers of 
Congress. That despotism can change the social arrange- 
ments of the Southern States, and has a right to do it. 
Every man of you who speaks of the emancipation of the 
negroes allows it would be decisive if it were used. You 
allow that, when it is a military necessity, we may use it. 
What I claim is, in honor of our institutions, that we are 
not put to wait for the wisdom or the coui'age of a 



438 THE WAT^OR THE UNION. 

general. Our fathers left us with no such miserable plan 
of government. They gave us a government with the 
power,, in such times as these, of df)ing something that 
would save the helm of state in the hands of its citizens. 
[Cheers.] We could cede the Carolinas ; I liave some- 
times wished we could shovel them into tlie Atlantic. 
[Applause and laughter.] We can cede a State. We 
can do anything for the time being ; and no theory of gov- 
ernment can deny its power to make the most unlimited 
change. The only alternative is this : Do you prefer the 
despotism of your own citizens or of foreigners ? That is 
the only question in war. [Cheers.] In peace no man 
may be deprived of his life but '' by the judgment of his 
peers, or the law of the land." To touch life, you must 
have a grand jury to present, a petit jury to indict, a judge 
to condemn, and a sheriff to execute. That is constitu- 
tional, the necessary and invaluable bulwark of liberty, in 
peace. But in war the government bids Sigel shoot Lee, 
and the German is at once grand jury, petit jury, judge, 
and executioner. That, too, is constitutional, necessary, 
and invaluable, protecting a nation's rights and life. 

Now this government, which abolishes my right of 
habeas corpus^ — which strikes down, because it is neces- 
sary, every Saxon bulwark of liberty, — which proclaims 
martial law, and holds every dollar and every man at the 
will of the Cabinet, — do you turn round and tell me that 
this same government has no rightful power to break the 
cobweb — it is but a cobweb — which binds a slave to 
his master, — to stretch its hands across the, Potomac, and 
root up the evil which, for seventy years, has troubled its 
peace, and now culminates in rebellion ? I maintain, 
therefore, the power of the government itself to inaugu- 
rate such a policy ; and I say, in order to save the Union, 
do justice to the black. [Applause.] 

I would claim of Congress — in the exact language of 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 439 

Adams, of the " government " — a solemn act abolishing 
slavery throughout the Union, securing compensation to 
loyal slaveholders. As the Constitution forbids the States 
to make and allow nobles, I would now, by equal au- 
thority, forbid them to make skives or allow slaveholders. 
This has been the usual course at such times. Nations, 
convulsed and broken by too powerful elements or insti- 
tutions, have used the first moment of assured power - 
the first moment that they clearly saw and fully appreci- 
ated the evil — to cut up the dangerous tree by the roots. 
So France expelled the Jesuits, and the Middle Ages the 
Templars. So England, in her great rebellion, abohshed 
nobility and the Established Church ; and the French 
Revolution did the same, and finally gave to each child an 
equal share in his deceased father's lands. For the same 
purpose, England, in 1745, abolished clanship in Scotland, 
the root of the Stuart faction ; and we, in '76, abolished 
nobles and all tenure of estates savoring of privileged 
classes. Such a measure supplies the South just what she 
needs, — capital. That sum which the North gives the 
loyal slaveholder, not as acknowledging his property in 
the slave, but a measure of conciliation, — perhaps an 
acknowledgment of its share of the guilt, — will call mills, 
ships, agriculture, into being. The free negro will redeem 
to use lands never touched, whose fertility laughs Illinois 
to scorn, and finds no rival but Egypt. And remember, 
besides, as Montesquieu says, '' The yield of land depends 
less on its fertility than on the freedom of its inhabitants." 
Such a measure binds the negro to us by the indissoluble 
tie of gratitude ; the loyal slaveholder, by strong self-inter- 
est, — our bonds are all his property ; the other whites, 
by prosperity, — they are hfted in the scale of civiliza- 
tion and activity, educated and enriched. Our insti- 
tutions are then homogeneous. We grapple the Union 
together with hooks of steel, — make it as lasting as the 
granite which underlies the continent. 



440 THE T^l^ FOR THE UNION. 

People may say this is a strange language for me, — a 
Disunionist. Well, I was a Disunionist, sincerely, for 
twenty years. I did hate the Union, when Union meant 
lies in the pulpit and mobs in the street, when Union 
meant making white men hypocrites and black men slaves. 
[Cheers.] I did prefer purity to peace, — I acknowledge 
it. The child of six generations of Puritans, knowing well 
the value of union, I did prefer disunion to being the 
accomplice of tyrants. But now, when I see what the 
Union must mean in order to last, when I see that you 
cannot have union without meaning justice, and when 
I see twenty millions of people, with a current as swift 
and as inevitable as Niagara, determined that this Union 
shall mean justice, why should I object to it ? I endeav- 
ored honestly, and am not ashamed of it, to take nineteen 
States out of this Union, and consecrate them to liberty, 
and twenty millions of people answer me back, " We like 
your motto, only we mean to keep thirty-four States under 
it." Do you suppose I am not Yankee enough to buy 
union when I can have it at a fair })rice ? I know the 
value of union ; and the reason why I claim that Caro- 
lina has no right to secede is this : we are not a partner- 
ship, we are a marriage, and we have done a great many 
things since we were married in 1789 which render it 
unjust for a State to exercise the right of revolution on 
any ground now alleged. I admit the right. I acknowl- 
edge the great principles of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, that a state exists for the liberty and happiness of 
the people, that these are the ends of government, and 
that, when government ceases to promote those ends, the 
people have a right to remodel their institutions. I 
acknowled£!;e the rio-ht of revolution in South Carolina, 
but at the same time I acknowledge that right of revolu- 
tion only when government has ceased to promote those 
ends. Now we have been married for seventy years. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 441 

We have bought Florida. We rounded the Union to the 
Gulf. We bought the Mississippi for commercial purposes. 
We stole Texas for slave purposes. Great commercial 
interests, great interests of peace, have been subserved by 
rounding the Union into a perfect shape ; and the money 
and sacrifices of two generations have been given for this 
purpose. To break up that Union now, is to defraud us 
of mutual advantages relating to peace, trade, national se- 
curity, which cannot survive disunion. The right of rev- 
olution is not matter of caprice. " Governments long 
established," says our Declaration of Independence, *' are 
not to be changed for light and transient causes." When 
so many important interests and benefits, in their nature 
indivisible and which disunion destroys, have been secured 
by common toils and cost, the South must vindicate her 
revolution by showing that our government has become 
destructive of its proper ends, else the right of revolution 
does not exist. Why did we steal Texas ? Why have 
we helped the South to strengthen herself? Because she 
said that slavery within the girdle of the Constitution 
would die out through the influence of natural principles. 
She said : " We acknowledge it to be an evil ; but at the 
same time it will end by the spread of free principles and 
the influence of free institutions." And the North said: 
" Yes ; we will give you privileges on that account, and 
we will return your slaves for you." Every slave sent 
back from a Northern State is a fresh oath of the South 
that she would not secede. Our fathers trusted to the 
promise that this race should be left under the influence 
of the Union, until, in the maturity of time, the day should 
arrive when they would be lifted into the sunlight of God's 
equality. I claim it of South Carolina. By virtue of that 
pledge she took Boston and put a rope round her neck in 
that infamous compromise which consigned to slavery An- 
thony Burns. I demand the fulfilment on her part even of 



442 THE^^H^FOR THE UNION. 

that infamous pledge. Until South Carolina allows me a 
the influence that nineteen millions of Yankee lips, asking 
infinite questions, have upon the welfare of those four mil- 
lions of bondsmen, I deny her right to secede. [Applause.] 
Seventy years has the Union postponed the negro. For 
seventy years has he been beguiled with the promise, as 
she erected one bulwark after another around slavery, 
that he should have the influence of our common institu- 
tions. I claim it to-day. Never, with my consent, Avhile 
the North thinks that the Union can or shall mean justice, 
shall those four hundred thousand South Carolina slaves 
go beyond the influence of Boston ideas. That is my 
strono; reason for clinoino; to the Union. This is also one 
main reason why, unless upon most imperative and mani- 
fest grounds of need and right, South Carolina has no 
right of revolution ; none till she fulfils her promise in 
this respect. 

I know how we stand to-day, with the frowning cannon 
of the English fleet ready to be thrust out of the port-holes 
aojainst us. But I can answer Enoland with a better an- 
swer than William H. Seward can write. I can answer 
her with a more statesmanhke paper than Simon Cameron 
can indite. I would answer her with the Stars and Stripes 
floating over Charleston and New Orleans, and the itiner- 
ant Cabinet of Richmond packing up archives and wearing- 
apparel to ride back to iNlontgomery. There is one thing, 
and only one, which John Bull respects, and that is suc- 
cess. It is not for us to ffive counsel to the o;overnment 
on points of diplomatic propriety ; but I suppose we may 
express our opinion ; and my opinion is, that, if I were the 
President of these thirty-four States, while I was, I should 
want Mason and Slidell to stay with me. I say, then, 
first, as a matter of justice to the slave, we owe it to him ; 
the day of his deliverance has come. The long promise 
of seventy years is to be fulfilled. The South draws back 



THE WAR FOE THE UNION. 443 

from the pledge. The North is bound, in honor of the 
memory of her fathers, to demand its exact fulfilment, and 
in order to save this Union, which now means justice and 
peace, to recognize the rights of four millions of its vic- 
tims. This is the dictate of justice ; —justice, which at 
this hour is craftier than Seward, more statesmanlike than 
Cameron ; justice, which appeals from the cabinets of 
Europe to the people ; justice, which abases the proud 
and lifts up the humble ; justice, which disarms England, 
saves the slaves from insurrection, and sends home the 
Confederate army of the Potomac to guard its own 
hearths ; justice, which gives us four milhons of friends, 
spies, sokUers in the enemy's country, planted each one 
at their very hearth-sides ; justice, which inscribes every 
cannon with " Holiness to the Lord ! " and puts a North- 
ern heart behind every musket ; justice, which means 
victory now and peace forever. To all cry of demaooo-ues 
asking for boldness, I respond vrith the cry of " Justice, 
immediate, absolute justice ! " And if I dared to descend 
to a lower level, I should say to the merchants of this 
metropolis. Demand of the government a speedy settle- 
ment of this question. Every hour of delay is big with 
risk. Remember, as Governor Boutwell suggests, that 
our present financial prosperity comes because we have 
corn to export in place of cotton ; and that another year, 
should Europe have a good harvest and we an ordinary 
one, while an inflated currency tempts extravagance and 
large imports, general bankruptcy stares us in the face. 
Do you love the Union ? Do you really think that on tho 
other side of the Potomac are the natural brothers and 
customers of the manufacturing ingenuity of the North ? 
I tell you, certain as fate, God has written the safety of 
that relation in the same scroll with justice to the neo-ro. 
The hour strikes. You may win him to your side ; you 
may anticipate the South ; you may save twelve millions 



444 THlS^g FOR THE UNION. 

of customers. Delay it, let God grant McClellan victory, 
let God grant the Stars and Stripes over New Orleans, 
and it is too late. 

Jeff Davis will then summon that same element to his 
side, and twelve millions of customers are added to Lan- 
cashire and Lyons. Then commences a war of tariffs, 
embittered by that other war of angered nationahties, 
which are to hand this and the other Confederacy down 
for twenty-five or thirty years, divided, weakened, and 
bloody with intestine struggle. And what will be our 
character ? I do not wholly agree with Edward Everett, 
in that very able and eloquent address which he delivered 
in Boston, in which, however, he said one thing pre- 
eminently true, — he, the compromiser, — that if, in 
1830-31, nullification, under Jackson, had been hung 
instead of compromised, we never should have had Jeff 
Davis. [Loud applause.] I agree with him, and hope 
we shall make no second mistake of the kind. But I do 
not agree with him in the conclusion that these nine- 
teen States, left alone, would be of necessity a second-rate 
power. No. I believe in brains ; and I know these 
Northern men have more brains in their right hands than 
others have in their heads. [Laughter and cheers.] I 
know that we mix our soil with brains, and that, con- 
sequently, we are bomid to conquer. Why, the waves 
of the ocean mio;ht as well rebel against our granite coast, 
or the wild bulls of the prairies against man, as either 
England or the South undertake to stop the march of the 
nineteen Free States of this continent. [Applause.] 

It is not power that we should lose, but it is character. 
How should we stand when Jeff Davis had turned that 
corner upon us, — abolished slavery, won European sym- 
pathy, and established his Confederacy? Banla'upt in 
character, — outwitted in statesmanship. Our record 
would be, as we entered the sisterhood of nations, -^ 



THE WAR FOR THE UOTON. 445 

•'Longed and struggled and begged to be admitted into 
the partnership of tyrants, and they were kicked out ! " 
And the South would spring into the same arena, bearino- 
on her brow, — " She flung away what she thought gain- 
ful and honest, in order to gain her independence ! " A 
record better than the gold of California or all the brains 
of the Yankee. 

Righteousness is preservation. You who are not Aboli- 
tionists do not come to this question as I did, — from an 
interest in these four millions of black men. I came on 
this platform from sympathy with the negro. I acknowl- 
edge it. You come to this question from an idolatrous 
regard for the Constitution of '89. But here we stand. 
On the other side of the ocean is England, holding out, 
not I think a threat of war, — I do not fear it, — but 
holding out to the South the intimation of a wilHngness, 
if she will but change her garments, and make herself 
decent, [laughter,] to take her in charge, and give 
her assistance and protection. There stands England, 
the most selfish and treacherous of modern governments. 
[Loud and long-continued cheers.] On the other side of 
the Potomac stands a statesmanship, urged by personal 
and selfish interests, which cannot be matched, and be- 
tween them they have but one object, — it is in the end 
to divide the Union. 

Hitherto the negro has been a hated question. The 
Union moved majestic on its path, and shut him out, 
eclipsing him from the sun of equality and happiness. He 
has changed his position to-day. He now stands between 
us and the sun of our safety and prosperity, and you and 
I are together on the same platform, — the same plank, 
— our object to save the institutions which our fathers 
planted. Save them in the service of justice, in the ser- 
vice of peace, in the service of liberty ; and in that service 
demand of the government at Washington that they shall 



44b THB.^^ FOR THE UNION. 

mature and announce a purpose. That flag lowered at 
Sumter, that flight at Bull Run, will rankle in the heart 
of the republic fur centuries. Notliing will ever medicine 
that wound but the p-overnment announcino; to the world 
that it knows well whence came its trouble, and is deter- 
mined to effect its cure, and, consecrating the banner to 
liberty, to plant it on the shores of the Gidf. [Applause.] 
I say in the service of the negro ; but I do not forget the 
white man, the eight millions of poor whites, thinking 
themselves our enemies, but who are really our friends. 
Their interests are identical with our own. An Alabama 
slaveholder, sitting with me a year or two ago, said : — 

" In our northern counties they are your friends. A man owns 
one slave or two slaves, and he eats with tliem, and sleeps in the 
same room (they have but one), as much as a hired man here 
eats with the farmer he serves. There is no difference. They 
are too poor to send their sons North for education. They have 
no newspapers, and they know notlung but what they are told by 
us. If you could get at them, they would be on your side, but 
we mean you never shidl." 

In Paris there are one hundred thousand men whom 
caricature or epigram can at any time raise to barricade 
the streets. Whose fault is it that such men exist ? The 
government's ; and the government under which such a 
mass of ignorance exists deserves to be barricaded. The 
government under which eight millions of people exist, so 
ignorant that two thousand politicians and a hundred thou- 
sand aristocrats can pervert them into rebelHon, deserves 
to be rebelled against. In the service of those men I 
mean, for one, to try to fulfil the pledge my fathers made 
when they said, " We will guarantee to every State a 
republican form of government." [Applause.] A privi- 
leged class, grown strong by the help and forbearance of 
the North, plots the establishment of aristocratic govern- 
ment in form as well as essence, — conspires to rob the 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 447 

non-slaveholders of their civil rights. This is lust tho 
danger our national pledo-e was meant to meet. Our 
fathers*' honor, national good faith, the cause of free in- 
stitutions, the peace of the continent, bid us fulfil this 
pledge, — insist on using the right it gives us to preserve 
the Union. 

I mean to fulfil the pledge that free institutions shall be 
preserved in the several States, and I demand it of the 
government. I would have them, therefore, announce to 
the world what they have never yet done. I do not won 
der at the want of sympathy on the part of England with 
us. The South says, " I am fighting for slavery." The 
North says, '' I am not fighting against it." Why should 
England interfere ? The people have nothing on which 
to hang their sympathy. 

I would have government announce to the world that 
we understand the evil which has troubled our peace for 
seventy years, thwarting the natural tendency of our in- 
stitutions, sending ruin along our w^harves and through 
our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national 
conscience. We know w^ell its character. But Democ- 
racy, unlike other governments, is strong enough to let 
evils work out their own death, — strono; enouo-h to face 
them wdien they reveal their proportions. It was in this 
sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that 
our fathers submitted to thenvell-known evil of slavery, 
and tolerated it until the viper we thought we could safely 
tread on, at the touch of disappointment, starts up a fiend 
whose stature reaches the sky. But our cheeks do not 
blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this for- 
bearance of three generations, confident that she has yet 
power to execute her will, she sends her proclamation 
down to the Gulf, — Freedom to every man beneath the 
Stars, and death to every institution that distui'bs our 
peace or threatens the future of the repubhc. 



THE CABINET.* 



I QUITE agree with tlie view which my friend (Rev. 
M. D. Conway) takes of the present situation of the 
country, and of our future. I have no hope, as he has not, 
that the intelHgent purpose of our government will ever 
find us a way out of this war. I think, if we find any 
way out of it, we are to stumble out of it by the gi'adual 
education of the people, making their own way on, a gi'eat 
mass, without leaders. I do not think that anything 
which we can call the government has any purpose to get 
rid of slavery. On the contrary, I think the present pur- 
pose of the government, so far as it has now a purpose, is 
to end the war and save slavery. I believe Mr. Lincoln 
is conducting this war, at present, with the purpose of 
saving slavery. That is his present line of policy, so far 
as trustworthy indications of any policy reach us. The 
Abolitionists are charged with a desire to make this a po- 
litical war. All civil wars are necessarily political wars, 
— they can hardly be anything else. Mr. Lincoln is in- 
tentionally waging a 2-^oUtical war. He knows as well as 
we do at this moment, as well as every man this side of a 
lunatic hospital knows, that, if he wants to save lives and 
money, the way to end this war is to strike at slavery. I 
do not believe that McClellan himself is mad or idiotic 
enough to have avoided that idea, even if he has tried to 
* Speech at Abington, in the Grove, August 1, 1862- 



THE CABINET. 449 

do SO. But General McClellan is waging a political war ; 
so is Mr. Lincoln. When General Butler ordered the 
women and children to be turned out of the camps at New 
Orleans, and one of the colonels of the Northwest remon- 
strated, and hid himself in his tent, rather than witness the 
misery which the order occasioned, — when the slavehold- 
ers came to receive the women and children who were to 
be turned out of the camps, and the troops actually 
charged upon them with bayonets to keep them out of 
the line, — General Butler knew what he was doing. It 
was not to save rations, it was not to get rid of individ- 
uals ; it was to conciliate New Orleans. It was a political 
move. When Mr. Lincoln, by an equivocal declaration, 
nullifies General Hunter, he does not do it because he 
doubts either the justice or the efficiency of Hunter's 
proclamation ; he does it because he is afraid of Kentucky 
on the right hand, and the Daily Advertiser on the kft. 
[Laughter.] He has not taken one step since he entered 
the Presidency that has been a pui'ely military step, and 
he could not. A civil war can hardly be anything but a 
political war. That is, all civil wars are a struggle be- 
tween opposite ideas, and armies are but the tools. If 
Mr. Lincoln believed in the North and in Liberty, he 
would let our army act on the principles of Liberty. He 
does not. He believes in the South as the most efficient 
and vital instrumentality at the present moment, therefore 
defers to it. I had a friend who went to Port Royal, 
went among the negro huts, and saw the pines that were 
growing between them shattered with shells and cannon- 
balls. He said to the negroes, " When those balls came, 
were you here ? " " Yes." " Did n't you run ? " " No, 
massa, we knew they were not meant for us." It was a 
sublime, childlike faith in the justice, the providence, of 
the Almighty. Every Southern traitor on the other side 
of the Potomac can say of McClellan's cannon-ball, if he 

29 



450 ~^^«5E CABINET. 

ever fires one, " We know it is not meant for us." For 
they know he is fighting a political war, as all of us must ; 
the only question is. In the service ^f which^political idea; 
shall the war be Avaged, — in the service of saving the 
Union as it was. or the Union as it ought to be ? Mr. 
Lincoln dare not choose between these two phrases. He 
is waging a war which he dare not describe, in the ser\nce 
of a political idea that he dare not shape into words. He 
is not fighting vigorously and heartily enough even to get 
good terms in case of a treaty, — not to talk of victory. 
All savages call clemency cowardice ; they respect noth- 
ing but force. The Southern barbarians mistake clem- 
ency for cowardice ; and every act of Lincoln, which he 
thinks is conciliation, they take for evidence of his cow- 
ardice, or his distrust. I do not say that McClellan is a 
traitor, but I say this, that if he had been a traitor from 
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he could not 
have served the South better than he has done since he 
was commander-in-chief [applause] ; he could not have 
carried on the war in more exact deference to the politics 
of that side of the Union. And almost the same thing may 
be said of Mr. Lincoln, — that if he had been a traitor, he 
could not have worked better to strengthen one side, and 
hazard the success of the other. There is more danger 
to-day that Washington will be taken than Richmond. 
Washington is besieged more truly than Richmond is. 
After fifteen months of war, such is the position of the 
strongest nation on the globe ; for the nineteen Northern 
States, led by a government which serves their ideas, are 
the strongest nation on the face of the globe. Now, I 
think, and if I were in the Senate I should have said to 
the government, that every man who under the present 
policy loses his life in the swamps of the South, and every 
dollar sent there to be wasted, only prolongs a murderous 
and wasteful war, waged for no purpose whatever. This 



THE CABINET. 



451 



is my meaning. In this war, mere victory on a battle- 
field amounts to nothing, contributes little or nothing 
toward ending the war. If our present policy led to de- 
cisive victories, therefore, (which it does not,) it would be 
worth little. The war can only be ended by annihilating 
that oligarchy which formed and rules the South and 
makes the war, —by annihilating a state of society. No 
social state is really annihilated, except when it is replaced 
by another. Our present policy neither aims to annihilate 
that state of things we call - the South," made up of 
pride, idleness, ignorance, barbarism, theft, and murder 
nor to replace it with a substitute. Such an aimless war 
I call wasteful and murderous. Better that that South 
should go to-day, than that we should prolong such a war 
To keep 500,000 men in the field, we must have 560,000 
men on the rolls, for there are 58,000 or 60,000 men 
necessarily invalid in an army of half a million; and to 
keep that 560,000 good, you must have a fresh recruiting 
every year of 123,000 men. This nation is to give, year 
by year, while this war lasts, 123,000 men to the army 
and that number are to fall out of the ranks, according to 
the experience of the last sixteen months, by death either 
from disease or the sword; or, if not death, then wounds 
so serious as to make a man's life only a burden to him- 
self and the community. A hundred and twenty-three 
thousand men a year, and, I suppose, a million of' dollars 
a day, and a government without a purpose I 

You say, -Why not end the war?" We cannot. 
Jefferson said of slavery, " We have got the wolf by 
the ears : we can neither hold him nor let him go." Thai 
was his figure We have now got the South -^ this wolf 
— by the ears ; we must hold her; we cannot let her go. 
There is to be no peace on this continent, as I beheve, 
until these thirty States are united. You and I may live' 
to be seventy years old; we shall never see peace on this 



452 """^Sli CABINET. 

continent until we see one flag from the Lakes to the 
Gulf, and we shall never see it until slavery is ehminated 
from the institutions of these States* Let the South go 
to-morrow, and you have not got peace. Intestine wai 
here, border war along the line, aggression and intrigue 
on the part of the South ! She has lived with us for 
seventy yeai's, and kept us constantly in turmoil. Exas- 
perated by suffering, grown hauglity by success, the mo- 
ment she goes off, is such a neighbor likely to treat us any 
better, with our imaginary line between us, than she has 
treated us for seventy years while she held the sceptre ? 
The moment we ask for terms, she counts it victory, and 
the war in another shape goes on. You and I are never 
to see peace, we are never to see the possibility of putting 
the army of this nation, whether it be made up of nine- 
teen or thirty-four States, on a peace footing, until slaveiy 
is destroyed. A large army, immense expenses, a foreign 
party encamped among us, a despotic government, using 
necessarily despotic war powers, — that is the future until 
slavery is destroyed. As long as you keep a tortoise at 
the head of the government, you are digging a pit with 
one hand and filling it with the other. The war means 
digging a pit with your two hands, and filling it up with 
the lives of your sons and the accumulations of your 
fathers. Now, therefore, until this nation announces, in 
some form or other, that this is a war, not against Jeffer- 
son Davis, but against the system ; until the whole nation 
indorses the resolution of the New York Chamber of 
Commerce, " Better every rebel die than one loyal 
soldier," [applause,] and begs of the government, de- 
mands of the government, to speak that word which is 
victory and peace, — until we do that, we shall have no 
prospect of peace. 

I do not believe in the government. I agree entirely 
with Mr. Conway. I do not believe this government has 



THE CABINET. 453 

got either vigor or a purpose. It drifts witli events. If 
Jefferson Davis is a sane man, if he is a sagacious man, 
and has the power to control his army, he' will never 
let it take Washington ; for he knows as well as we do, 
that shelling the dome of that Capitol to ashes, that the 
Capitol in flames or surmounted with the rebel flag, would 
be the fiery cross to melt the North into unity, and to 
demand emancipation. [Applause.] We are paying a 
million of dollars a day for soldiers to dig ditches in the 
Chickahominy swamps, but the best expense we could be 
put to would be to lose the marble Capitol under the shells 
of Beauregard ; for the very telegraph that flashed the 
news North and West would go back laden with the 
demand that if, in the providence of God, Lincoln had 
survived the bombardment of Washington, and Hamlin 
was not President, — which I wish he were, — he should 
proclaim emancipation. Possibly that would make even 
him over into an Abolitionist. I do not believe that Jef- 
ferson Davis, while he is able to control his forces, will 
ever allow them to take Washington. He wants time. 
If we float on until the 4th of March, 1863, England 
could hardly be blamed if she did acknowledge ^ ne South. 
A very fair argument could be urged, on principles of 
international law, that she ought to do it. The South 
will have gone far to prove her right to be acknowledged. 
She will have maintained herself two full years against 
such efforts as no nation ever made. Davis Avants to tide 
over to that time, without rousing the North. He does 
not wish any greater successes than will just keep us 
where we are, and allow Europe to see the South strong, 
vigorous, and the North only her equal. One such move 
as that on Washington, and the South would kick the 
beam. He knows it. If any man has light enough on 
the future to pray God to do any particular thing, I advise 
him to pray for an attack on Washington and its capture, 



454 ^^CHE CABINET. 

for nothing less than that seems likely, withm a few 
months, to wake up these Northern States to the present 
emergency. But for these considerations, I see not why 
Jefferson Davis should not throw all his troops upon 
Washington, first informing General McClellan of the 
proposed attack, and demanding of him enough Federal 
troops to protect the rebel property at Richmond during 
Beauregard's absence. 

The President, judged by both proclamations that have 
followed the late confiscation act of Congress, has no mind 
whatever. He has not uttered a word which gives even a 
twilight glimpse of any antislavery purpose. He may be 
honest, — nobody cares whether the tortoise is honest or 
not ; he has neither insight, nor prevision, nor decision. 
It is said in Washington streets that he long ago wrote a 
proclamation abolishing slavery in the State of Virginia, 
but McClellan bullied him out of it. It is said, too, — 
what is extremely probable, — that he has more than 
once made up his mind to remove McClellan, and Ken- 
tucky bullied him out of it. The man who has been 
beaten to that pulp in sixteen months, what hope can we 
have of him ? None. There is no ground for any ex- 
pectations from this government. We are to pray for 
such blows as will arouse the mass of the people into 
systematic, matured, intelligent interference in the action 
of the government. When I was here a year ago, I said 
I thought the President needed the advice of great bodies 
of prominent men. That has taken a year. The New 
York Chamber of Commerce, the Common Council, and 
the Defence Committee, have just led the way. Some of 
the Western Councils have followed, it is said. Let us 
hope that they may have decisive effect at Washington ; 
but I do not believe they will. I do not believe there is 
in that Cabinet — Seward, Chase, Stanton, Wells, or the 
President of the country — enough to make a leader. If 



THE CABINET 455 

McClellan should capitulate in his swamp, if Johnston 
should take Washington, if Butler should be driven out of 
New Orleans, if those ten fabulous iron ships from Eng- 
land at Mobile could be turned into realities, and Palm- 
erston acknowledge the Confederacy, I should have hope ; 
for I do not believe these nineteen millions of people mean 
to be beaten ; and if they do, I do not believe they can 
afford to be beaten. I think, when we begin to yield, 
the South will demand svich terms as even the Boston 
Courier cannot get low enough to satisfy them. [Laugh- 
ter and applause.] You do not know the sublime impu- 
uence and haughtiness of the tyrants of the South. You 
«ave not yet measured the terms which Jefferson Davis 
yill impose upon the North, when, if ever, it proposes 
iccommodation. The return of fugitives, the suppression 
)f antislavery discussion, monopoly of the Mississippi, sur- 
render of some Border States, — a thousand things that 
would make the yoke too heavy to be borne. I never did 
believe in the capacity of Abraham Lincoln, but I do 
believe in the pride of Davis, in the vanity of the South, 
in the desperate determination of those fourteen States ; 
and I believe in a sunny future, because God has driven 
them mad ; and their madness is our safety. They will 
never consent to anything that the North can grant ; and 
you must whip them, because, unless you do, they will 
grind you to powder. 

This war is to go on. There will be drafting in three 
months or six. The hunker, when he is obliged to go to 
war, will be like the man of whom Mr. Conway told us, 
who was willing to sit by a negro in the cars rather than 
stand all night, — he will be willing that the negro shall 
fight, with him or without him. That is a part of the logic 
of events which will be very effective ; but even that will 
not make Lincoln declare for emancipation. We shall wait 
one year or two, if we wait for him, before we get it. In 



456 '-^•Hj: CABINET. 

the mean time what an expense of blood and treasure each 
day ! It is a terrible expense that democracy pays for ita 
mode of government. If we lived in England now, if we 
lived in France now, a hundred men, convinced of the 
exigency of the moment, would carry the nation here or 
there. It is the royal road, short, sharp, and stern, like 
the 2d of December, with Napoleon's cannon enfilading 
every street in Paris. Democracy, when it moves, has to 
carry the whole people with it. The minds of nineteen 
millions of people are to be changed and educated. Min- 
isters and politicians have been preaching to them that the 
negro will not fight, that he is a nuisance, that slavery is 
an ordination of God, that the North ought to bar him out 
with statutes. The North wakes up, its heart poisoned, its 
hands paralyzed with these ideas, and says to its tortoise 
President, " Save us, but not through the negro ! " You 
do not yet believe in the negro. The papers are accumu- 
lating statistics to prove that the negro will work, and 
asking whether he will fight. If he will not fight, we are 
gone, that is all ! If he will not work without the lash, 
the Union is over. If the hunker theory is correct, there 
can be n» peace nor union on this continent, except under 
the heel of a slaveholding despotism. It is not the South 
we have to conquer ; it is the Egypt of the Southern half 
of Illinois ; it is the Devil in the editor's chair of the Boston 
Courier [merriment] ; it is the lump of unbaked dough, 
with no vitality except hatred of Charles Sumner, which 
sits in the editorial chair of the Daily Advertiser [ap- 
plause] ; it is the man who goes down to Virginia with 
the army, and thinks he goes there to watch the house 
of General Lee, and make the slaves work for him, while 
the master has gone to Corinth or to Richmond. These 
are the real enemies of the republic ; and if Lincoln could 
be painted, as Vanity Fair once painted him, like Sinbad 
with the Old Man of the Sea on his shoulders, it should be 



THE CABINET. 457 

these conservative elements weighing down the heart and 
the purpose of your President that the Hmner should pre- 
sent. If we go to the bottom, it will be because we have, 
in the providence of God, richly deserved it. It is the 
pro-slavery North that is her own greatest enemy. Lin- 
coln would act, if he believed the North wanted him to. 
The North, by an overwhelming majority, is ready to have 
him act, will indorse and support anything he does, yes, 
hopes he will fp forward. True, it is not yet ripe enough 
to demand ; but it is fully willing, indeed waits, for action. 
With chronic Whig distrust and ignorance of the people, 
Lincoln halts and fears. Our friend Conway has fairly 
painted him. He is not a genius ; he is not a man like 
Fremont, to stamp the lava mass of the nation with an 
idea ; he is not a man like Hunter, to coin his experience 
into ideas. I will tell you what he is. He is a first-rate 
second-rate man. [Laughter.] He is one of the best 
specimens of a second-rate man, and he is honestly wait- 
ing, like any other servant, for the people to come and 
send him on any errand they wish. In ordinary times, 
when the seas are calm, you can sail without a pilot, — 
almost any one can avoid a sunken ledge that the sun 
shows him on his right hand, and the reef that juts out 
on his left ; but it is when the waves smite heaven, and 
the thunder-cloud makes the waters ink, that you need a 
pilot; and to-day the nation's bark scuds, under the tem- 
pest, lee-shore and maelstrom on each side, needing no 
holiday captain, but a pilot, to weather the storm. Mr. 
Conway thinks we are to ride on a couple of years, and 
get one. I doubt it. Democracy is poisoning its fangs. 
It is making its way among the ballot-boxes of the 
nation. I doubt whether our next Congress will be as 
good as the last. That is not saying much. I doubt 
whether there will be such a weight of decided Repub- 
licanism in it as there was in the last Congress. I 



458 THE CABINET. 

should be afraid to commit to the nation to-day the choice 
of a President. What we want is some stunning misfor- 
tune ; what we want is a baptism of blood, to make the 
aching and bereaved hearts of the people cry out for Fre- 
mont, for an idea, at the head of the armies. [Applause.] 
Meanwhile, we must wander on in the desert, wasteful 
murderers. Every life lost in that swamp is murder by 
the Cabinet at Washington. Every dollar spent is stolen 
from the honest toil of the North, to pamper the conceited 
pride of the South in her own institution. Whose fault? 
Largely ours, — not wholly Lincoln's. He is as good as 
the average North, but not a leader, wdiich is what we 
need. In yonder grove, July after July, in years just past, 
the Whigs of this Commonwealth lavished their money 
to fire guns once every minute to smother the speeches 
that were made on our platform. You remember it. The 
sons of those men are dying in the South because their 
fathers smothered the message which, heeded, might have 
saved this terrible lesson to the nation. [Sensation.] Who 
shall say that God is not holding to their hps the cup which 
they poisoned ? That Massachusetts is to be made over 
again, and, under competent leaders, hmled as a thunder- 
bolt against the rebellion. We are not to shrink from the 
idea that this is a political war : it must be. But its poli- 
tics is a profound faith in God and the people, in justice 
and liberty, as the eternal safety of nations as well as of 
men. [Applause.] It is of that Lincoln should make his 
politics, planting the corner-stone of the new Union in the 
equality of every man before the law, and justice to all 
races. [Renewed applause.] If military necessity did 
not call for a million of blacks in the army, civil necessity 
would dictate it. Slavery, instead of being a dreaded 
perplexity, something we are to wail over, is a God-given 
weapon, a glorious opportunity, a sword rough-ground by 
God, and ready every moment for our use. The nation, 



THE CABINET. 459 

the most stupid in it, — all but the traitors, — know and 
confess that to abolish it would end the rebellion. Thus, 
therefore, God gives us knowledge^ keeps for us the weapon ; 
all we need ask for is courage to use it. I say, there- 
fore, as Mr. Conway did, cease believing in the Cabinet ; 
there is nothing there for you. Pray God that, before he 
abandons this nation, he will deign to humble it by one 
blow that shall make it spring to Its feet, and use the 
strength it has. Beseech him to put despair into the 
hearts of the Cabinet. If we are ever called to see an- 
other President of the United States on horseback flying 
from his Capital, waste no tears ! He will return to that 
Capital on the arms of a million of adult negroes, the sure 
basis of a Union w^hich will never be broken. [Applause.] 
I like some of the signs of the times. I like the resolu- 
tions of the New York Chamber of Commerce. I like 
the article from Wilkes's Spirit of the Times, bidding us 
criticise McClellan, and no longer believe that Napoleons 
are made of mud. [Laughter.] I think the two poles of 
popular influence have been struck ; the young men, the 
sporting men, the fast men, the dissipated men, the New 
York Herald's constituency, and the commercial class, the 
merchants and bankers of the great metropolis. The thirty 
thousand copies of Wilkes which are circulated every week 
have a mighty influence. When its readers begin to be- 
lieve that McClellan is made of mud, it is a bright sign. 
Do not look to the Capital. We did think there was some- 
thing in Stanton ; there may be ; but he is overslaughed, 
he is eclipsed, he has gone into retirement behind Seward. 
The policy which prevails at Washington is to do nothing, 
and wait for events. I asked the lawyers of IlHnois, who 
had practised law with Mr. Lincoln for twenty years, " Is 
he a man of decision, is he a man who can say no ? " They 
all said: "If you had gone to the Illinois bar, and selected 
the man least capable of saying no, it would have been 



460 ^^HE CABINET. 

Abraliam Lincoln. He has no stiffness in him." I said 
to the bankers and the directors of railroads in Chicago, 
"Is McClellan a man who can say no?" and they said: 
" Banks we had only a few months ; we don't think 
much of him ; but to every question you asked, he would 
say yes or no in sixty minutes. McClellan never answered 
a question while he was here. If there was one to be 
decided, he floated until events decided it. He was here 
months, and never decided a single questi m that came up 
in the management of the Illinois Central." These are 
the men we have put at the head of the Union, and for 
fourteen months they have been unable to say yes or no. 
But that is the fault of the nation. We should have been 
live hundred millions of dollars richer, and sixty-three thou- 
sand lives more populous, if even Banks had been Com- 
mander-in-Chief instead of McClellan. [Applause.] I 
do not believe that Banks knows how to handle an army, 
as we all know he has no ideas, but I believe he would 
have pressed that army on and against something, and 
that is all it needed. I had a private letter from a captain 
in McClellan's army in the Peninsula, in which he said : 
" We have had five chances to enter Richmond ; we might 
have done it after Yorktown, after Williamsburg, and after 
Seven Pines, just as well as not ; no troops in front of us, 
we ourselves in full condition for an advance. Instead of 
that, we sat down and dug." 

The most serious charge I have against the President, 
the only thing that makes a film upon his honesty, — for 
I believe him as honest as the measure of his intellect and 
circumstances of his life allow, — is this : that, while I do 
not believe that in his heart he trusts McClellan a whit 
more than I do, from fear of the Border States and North- 
ern conservatism he keeps him at the head of the army, 
which loses two thousand men by disease every week, and 
spends from sixty to seventy thousand dollars a day ; and 



THE CABINET. 461 

if, twenty years hence, he renders up an account of his 
stewardship to his country, you that live, mark me ! will 
see him confess that this whole winter he never believed 
in McClellan's ability. That is the sore spot in the char- 
acter of an otherwise honest officer, and that is where this 
fear of conservatism sends him. Mr. WicklifFe of Ken- 
tucky and Mr. Davis of Kentucky put their feet down 
and say, " Do this, and the Border States leave you.'* 
There is not a Republican at the North who will be al- 
lowed to say it. Governor Andrew lisped it once, in his 
letter to Secretary Stanton, and how few, except the 
Abolitionists, dared to stand by him, even in Massachu- 
setts ! There is no public opinion that would support Mr. 
Sumner, with a loyal Commonwealth behind him, in mak- 
ing such a speech, once in the winter, as Garrett Davis 
made every day, with a Commonwealth behind him which 
has to be held in the Union by the fear of Northern bay- 
onets. It is because Conservatism is bold and Republi- 
canism is coward [" Hear ! "] that Abraham Lincoln 
has to stand where he does to-day. There will be no 
mystery if this nation goes to pieces. It will be God 
punishing it according to the measure of its sins. Ten 
years ago the Whig party could have educated it, and so 
postponed or averted this convulsion. It was left to pass 
on in its career, and the South finds it divided in senti- 
ment, servile in purpose ; our soldiers the servants of 
rebels ; our officers, with shoulder-straps, on the soil of a 
rebellious State like Virginia, more sycophantic to the 
slaveholder who comes to their camp, than Webster was 
in the Senate when Clay threatened him with the lash of 
Southern insolence, fifteen years ago. If this rebellion 
cannot shake the North out of her servility, God will keep 
her in constant agitation until he does shake us into a self- 
respecting, courageous people, fit to govern ourselves. 
[Applause.] This war will last just long enough to make 



462 ^^^ CABINET. 

US over into men, and when it has done this, we shall 
conquer with as much ease as the lion takes the tiniest 
animal in his gripe. If Mr. Lincohi could only be wak- 
ened to the idea which Mr. Conway has expressed, that 
God gives him the thunderbolt of slavery with which to 
crush the rebellion ; that there was never a rebellion 
arranged by Providence to be put down so easily, so com- 
pletely, so beneficially as this ; that, unlike the aristocracy 
of France and England, rooting itself underneath the 
whole surface of society, slavery almost makes good the 
prayer of the Roman tyrant, "Would that the people had 
one neck, and I could cut it!" — if Mr. Lincoln could 
only understand this, victory would be easy. God has 
massed up slavery into three hundred thousand hands. 
He has marked it by the black color, so that the most 
ignorant cannot err, so that the blindest shall see enough 
to strike at this central fio;ure which holds the life-blood of 
the rebellion. [Applause.] Let us do our duty, and 
feel, however long the war, however fatal and disastrous 
the experience, that we have left no stone unturned, no 
word unspoken, which can save a mighty nation fi'om the 
greatest sufferings God ever inflicted on an age. 

My friend says he would say to the tyrants of the Old 
World, " Come on ! " That is a fearful taunt. The 
collision of two such nations as the England of this side 
the Atlantic, and the England of the other, would shake 
the globe. No such war has been known since Christ. 
Half of all the old wars massed into one would not equal 
it. We should sweep the commerce of the mightiest 
commercial nation from the ocean. We should send 
starvation into Lancashire and Lyons, and she would 
make our coast a desolation, and send anguish into mil- 
lions of homes. The ingenuity of one race divided into 
two nations, which has reached an almost superhuman 
acuteness, would be all poured into the channel of the 



THE CABINET. 4g3 

lloodlest war ; and behind it would be the Saxon deter- 
mination, whicli, like that of the bull-dog, its type, will 
die in the death-grapple before it yields. Old national 
hate, fresh-edged and perpetuated, — untold wealth de- 
stroyed, — millions of lives lost, lives of the most culti- 
vated nations, — the progress of the race stopped, — chaos 
come again over the feirest portion of Christendom,— 
fifty millions of people, dealing such death-blows across 
the Atlantic in the nineteenth century, — it is a burden 
which we are to pray God he will not call upon us to bear, 
— a curse from which he will graciously save civilization 
and the race. On the contrary, let us hope that Southern 
success may be so rapid and abundant, that a blow lil^^e 
that which stuns the drunkard into sobriety may stun our 
Cabinet into vigor, and that nineteen millions of people, 
puttmg forth their real strength in the right direction, 
may keep peace outside our borders until we make peace 
within. [Loud applause.] 



LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE. 



To THE Editor of the New York Tribune : — 

SIR : You misrepresent me when you say that I dis 
courage enhstments in the Union armies ; though, for 
aught I know, the garbled extracts and lying versions of 
New York papers may make me do that and many other 
things 1 never thought of. You know, by experience, 
that the American press, in general, neither tries nor 
means to speak truth about Abolitionists of any ty]3e. I 
have never discouraged enlistments. In the Union army 
are my kindred and some of my dearest friends. Others 
rest in fresh and honorable graves. No one of these ever 
heard a word from me to discourao-e his enllstlno;. I had 
the honor, last March, to address the Fourteenth Massa- 
chusetts at Fort Albany, and, this very week, the Thirty- 
third Massachusetts at Camp Cameron. No man In either 
regiment heard anything from my lips to discourage his 
whole-souled service of the Union. 

Allow me to state my own position. From 1843 to 
1861, I was a Disunlonlst, and sought to break this Union, 
convinced that disunion was the only righteous path, and 
the best one for the white man and the black. I sought 
disunion, not through conspiracy and violence, but by 
means which the Constitution itself warranted and pro- 
tected. I rejoice In those efforts. They were wise and 
useful. Sumter changed the whole question. After that, 



LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE, 46h 

peace and justice both forbade disunion. I now believe 
three thinors : — 

o 

1. The destruction of slavery is inevitable, whichever 
section conquers in this struggle. 

2. There never can be peace or union till slavery is 
destroyed. 

3. There never can be peace till one government rules 
from the Gulf to the Lakes; and having wronged the 
negro for two centuries, we owe him the preservation of 
the Union to guard his transition from slavery to freedom, 
and make it short, easy, and perfect. 

Beheving these tlu'ee things, I accept Webster's senti- 
ment, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and 
inseparable." Gladly would I serve that Union, — giving 
it musket, sword, voice, pen, — the best I have. But 
the Union which has for twenty-five years barred me 
from its highest privileges by demanding an oath to a pro- 
slavery Constitution, still shuts that door in my face ; and 
this administration still clings to a policy which, I think, 
makes every life now lost in Virginia, and every dollar 
now spent there, utter waste. I cannot conscientiously 
support such a Union and administration. But there is 
room for honest difference of opinion. Others can support 
it. To such I say. Go; give to the Union your best 
blood, your heartiest support. 

Is there, then, no place left for me ? Yes. I beheve 
in the Union. But government and the Union are one 
thing. This admmistration is quite another. Whether 
the administration will ever pilot us through our troubles, 
I have serious doubts : that it never will, unless it chano-es 
its present poHcy, I am quite certain. Where, then, is my 
place under a republican government which only reflects 
and executes public opinion ? I believe in getting through 
this war by the machinery of regular government, not by 
any Cromwell stalking into the Senate-Chamber or the 

30 



466 LETHi^^TO THE TRIBUNE. 

White House. Where, then, is my post, especially under 
an administration that avowedly sits waiting, begging to 
be told what to do ? I must educate, arouse, and mature 
a public opinion which shall compel the administration to 
adopt and support it in pursuing the policy I can aid. 
This I do by frankly and candidly criticising its present 
policy, civil and military. However " inapt and objec- 
tionable " you may think my " means," they are exactly 
described in your own words : " The good citizen may 
owe his government counsel, entreaty, admonition, to 
abandon a mistaken poKcy, as well as force to sustain it in 
the discharge of its great responsibilities." No adminis- 
tration can demand of a citizen to sacrifice his conscience., 
and the limits within which he is bound to sacrifice his 
opinion are soon reached. If the press had not systemati- 
cally eulogized a general, wliom none knew, and few 
really trusted, we should have saved twelve months, five 
hundred millions of dollars, and a hundred thousand lives. 
In my opinion, had the Tribune continued, last August, 
to do its duty and demand vigor of the government, you 
would have changed or controlled the Cabinet in another 
month, and saved us millions of dollars, thousands of lives, 
and untold disgrace. Such criticism is always every 
thinking man's duty. War excuses no man from this 
duty : least of all now, when a change of public sentiment, 
to lead the administration to and support it in a new 
policy, is our only hope of saving the Union. The Union 
belonffs to me as much as to Abraham Lincoln. What 
right has he or any official — our servants — to claim that 
I shall cease criticising his mistakes, when they are drag- 
ging the Union to ruin ? I find grave faults in President 
Lincoln ; but I do not believe he makes any such claim. 

I said on the 1st of August, that, had I been in the 
Senate, I should have refused the administration a dollar 
or a man until it adopted a right policy. That I repeat. 



LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE. 467 

Had I been, in that way, a part of the government, I 
.should have tried so to control its action. You were bound 
as a journalist, I think, to have impressed that duty on the 
JRepublican party which holds the administration. Such 
a course is right and proper under free governments. 
But when Congress has decided, and under its authority, 
or by his own, the President demands soldiers, the hour 
for such effort or protest is gone. We have no right now 
to "discourage enlistments," as a means to change public 
opinion, or to influence the administration. Our remedy 
is different. If we cannot actively aid, we must submit to 
the penalty, and strive meanwhile to change that public 
thought which alone can alter the action of government. 

That duty I try to do in my measure. My criticism is 
not, like that of the traitor presses, meant to paralyze the 
administration, but to goad it to more activity and vigor, 
or to change the Cabinet. I claim of you, as a journalist 
of broad influence, that you resume the post which I think 
you deserted last summer, and hasten the ripening of that 
necessary public purpose by constant and fearless criticism 
of the whole policy of the administration, civil and mili- 
tary, in order to avert years of M^ar, to save thousands of 
lives, to guard the industry of the future from grinding 
taxes, to secure speedy and complete justice for the negro, 
and to put the Union beyond hazard. 

Respectfully yours, 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
August 16, 1862. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.* 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I have been re- 
quested to offer you a sketch made some years since, 
of one of the most remarkable men of the last generation, 

— the great St. Domingo chief, Toussaint I'Ouverture, 
an unmixed negro, with no drop of white blood in his 
veins. My sketch is at once a biography and an argu- 
ment, — a biography, of course very brief, of a negro 
soldier and statesman, which I offer you as an argument 
in behalf of the race from which he sprung. I am about 
to compare and weigh races ; indeed, I am engaged to- 
night in what vou will think the absurd effort to convince 
you that the negro race, instead of being that object of 
pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, 
judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side 
of the Saxon. Now races love to be judged in two ways, 

— by the great men they produce, and by the average 
merit of the mass of the race. We Saxons are proud of 
Bacon, Shakespeare, Hampden, Washington, Franklin, 
the stars we have lent to the galaxy of history ; and then 
we turn with equal pride to the average merit of Saxon 
blood, since it streamed from its German home. So, 
again, there are three tests by which races love to be 
tried. The first, the basis of all, is courage, — the ele- 
ment which says, here and to-day, " This continent is 

♦ Lecture delivered in New York and Boston, December, 1861. 



TOUSSATNT L'OUVERTURE. 469 

mine, from the Lakes to the Gulf: let him beware who 
seeks to divide it ! " [Cheers.] And the second is the 
recognition that force is doubled by purpose ; liberty 
regulated by law is the secret of Saxon progress. And 
the third element is persistency, endurance ; first a pur- 
pose, then death or success. Of these three elements is 
made that Saxon pluck which has placed our race in the 
van of modern civilization. 

In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quix- 
otic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of 
standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged 
either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage, 
its purpose, or its endurance, to a place as near ours as 
any other blood known in history. And, for the purpose 
of my argument, I take an island, St. Domingo, about the 
size of South Carolina, the third spot in America upon 
which Columbus placed his foot. Charmed by the mag- 
nificence of its scenery and fertility of its soil, he gave it 
the fondest of all names, Hispaniola, Little Spain. His 
successor, more pious, rebaptized it from St. Dominic, St. 
Domingo ; and w^hen the blacks, in 1803, drove our white 
blood from its surface, they drove our names with us, and 
began the year 1804 under the old name, Hayti, the land 
of mountains. It was originally tenanted by filibusters, 
French and Spanish, of the early commercial epochs, the 
pirates of that day as of ours. The Spanish took the 
eastern two thirds, the French the western third of the 
island, and they gradually settled into colonies. The 
French, to whom my story belongs, became the pet colonv 
of the mother land. Guarded by peculiar privileges, 
enriched by the scions of wealthy houses, aided by the 
unmatched fertility of the soil, it soon was the richest gem 
in the Bourbon crown ; and at the period to which I call 
your attention, about the era of our Constitution, 1789, 
its wealth was almost incredible. The effeminacy of the 



470 TO^^Sl^^T L'OUVERTURE. 

white race rivalled that of the Sybarite of antiquity, while 
the splendor of their private life outshone Versailles, and 
their luxury found no mate but in tine mad prodigality of 
the Caesars. At this time the island held about thirty 
thousand whites, twenty or thirty thousand mulattoes, 
and five hundred thousand slaves. The slave-trade was 
active. About twenty-five thousand slaves were im- 
ported annually ; and this only sufficed to fill the gap 
which the murderous culture of sugar annually pro- 
duced. The mulattoes, as with us, were children of 
the slaveholders, but, unlike us, the French slaveholder 
never forgot his child by a bondwoman. He gave him 
everything but his name, — wealth, rich plantations, 
gangs of slaves ; sent him to Paris for his education, 
summoned the best culture of France for the instruc- 
tion of his daucrhters, so that in 1790 the mulatto race 
held one third of the real estate and one quarter of the 
personal estate of the island. But though educated and 
rich, he bowed under the same yoke as with us. Sub- 
jected to special taxes, he could hold no public office, and, 
if convicted of any crime, was punished with double 
severity. His son might not sit on the same seat at school 
with a white boy ; he might not enter a church where a 
white man was worshipping; if he reached a town on 
horseback, he must dismount and lead his horse by the 
bridle ; and when he died, even his dust could not rest in 
the same soil with a white body. Such was the white 
race and the mulatto, — the thin film of a civilization be- 
neath which surged the dark mass of five hundred thou- 
sand slaves. 

It was over such a population, — the white man melted 
in sensuality ; the mulatto feeling all the more keenly his 
degradation from the very wealth and culture he enjoyed ; 
the slave, sullen and indifferent, heeding not the quarrels 
or thj changes of the upper air, — it was over this popu- 



TOUSSAmi L'OUVERTURE. 471 

lation that there burst, in 1789, the thunder-storm of the 
French Revolution. The first words which reached the 
island were the motto of the Jacobin Club, — " Liberty, 
Equality." The white man heard them aghast. He had 
read of the streets of Paris running blood. The slave 
heard them with indifference ; it was a quarrel in the 
upper air, between other races, which did not concern 
liim. The mulatto heard them with a welcome which no 
dread of other classes could quell. Hastily gathered into 
conventions, they sent to Paris a committee of the whole 
body, laid at the feet of the National Convention the free 
gift of six millions of francs, pledged one fifth of their 
annual rental toward the payment of the national debt, 
and only asked in return tliat this yoke of civil and social 
contempt should be lifted from their shoulders. 

You may easily imagine the temper in which Mirabeau 
and Lafayette welcomed this munificent gift of the free 
mulattoes of the West Lidies, and in which the petition 
for equal civil rights was received by a body which had 
just resolved that all men were equal. The Convention 
hastened to express its gratitude, and issued a decree which 
commences thus : " All freeboi^n French citizens are equal 
before the law." Oge was selected — the friend of La- 
fayette, a lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch service, the son of 
a wealthy mulatto woman, educated in Paris, the comrade 
of all the leading Frencli Republicans — to carry the decree 
and the message of French Democracy to the island. He 
landed. The decree of the National Convention was laid 
on the table of the General Assembly of the island. One 
old planter seized it, tore it in fragments, and trampled it 
under his feet, swearing by all the saints in the calendar 
that the island might sink before they would share their 
rights with bastaras. They took an old mulatto, worth a 
million, who had simply asked for his rights under that 
decree, and hung him. A white lawyer of seventy, who 



472 T5TlSi<?NT L'OUVERTURE. 

drafted the petition, they hung at his side. They took 
Og^, broke him on the wheel, ordered him to be drawn 
and quartered, and one quarter of his body to be hung up 
in each of the four principal cities of the island ; and then 
they adjourned. 

You can conceive better than I can describe the mood 
in which Mirabeau and Danton received the news that 
their decree had been torn in pieces and trampled under 
foot by the petty legislature of an island colony, and their 
comrade drawn and quartered by the orders of its Gov- 
ernor. Robespierre rushed to the tribune and shouted, 
" Perish the colonies rather than sacrifice one iota of our 
principles ! " The Convention reaffirmed their decree, and 
sent it out a second time to be executed. 

But it was not then as now, when steam has married the 
continents. It took months to communicate ; and while 
this news of the death of Og^ and the defiance of the Na- 
tional Convention was going to France, and the answer 
returning, great events had taken place in the island itself. 
The Spanish or the eastern section, perceiving these divis- 
ions, invaded the towns of the western, and conquered 
many of its cities. One half of the slaveholders were 
Republicans, in love with the new constellation which had 
just gone up in our Northern sky, seeking to be admitted 
a State in this Republic, plotting for annexation. The 
other half were loyalists, anxious, deserted as they sup- 
posed themselves by the Bourbons, to make alliance with 
George III. They sent to Jamaica, and entreated its 
Governor to assist them in their intrigue. At first, he 
lent them only a few hundred soldiers. Some time later. 
General Howe and Admiral Parker were sent with sev- 
eral thousand men, and finally, the English government 
entermg more seriously into the plot. General Maitland 
landed with four thousand Englishmen on the north side 
of the island, and gained many successes. The mulattoea 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTUKE. 473 

were in the mountains, awaiting events. They distrusted 
the government, which a few years before they had assisted 
to put down an insurrection of the wliites, and which had 
forfeited its promise to grant them civil privileges. De- 
serted by both sections, Blanchelande, the Governor, had 
left the capita], and fled for refuge to a neighboring city. 

In this state of affairs, the second decree reached the 
island. The whites forgot their quarrel, sought out 
Blanchelande, and obliged him to promise that he never 
would publish the decree. Affrighted, the Governor con- 
sented to that course, and they left him. He then began 
to reflect that in reality he was deposed, that the Bour- 
bons had lost the sceptre of the island. He remembered 
his successful appeal to the mulattoes, five years before, to 
put down an insurrection. Deserted now by the whites 
and by the mulattoes, only one force was left him in the 
island, — that was the blacks : they had always remembered 
with gratitude the code noir, black code, of Louis XIV., 
the first interference of any power in their behalf. To 
the blacks Blanchelande appealed. He sent a deputation 
to the slaves. He was aided by the agents of Count 
d'Artois, afterward Charles X., who was seeking to do in 
St. Domingo what Charles II. did in Virginia, (whence 
its name of Old Dominion,) institute a reaction against 
the rebellion at home. The two joined forces, and sent 
first to Toussaint. Nature made him a Metternich, a di 
plomatist. He probably wished to avail himself of this 
offer, foreseeing advantage to his race, but to avail himself 
of it so cautiously as to provide against failure, risking as 
little as possible till the intentions of the other party had 
been tested, and so manamno; as to be able to 2:0 on or 
withdraw as the best interest of his race demanded. He 
had practised well the Greek rule, " Know thyself," and 
thoroughly studied his own part. Later in life, when criti- 
cising his gr(5at mulatto rival, Rigaud, he showed how 



474 irrrrii^ i l'ouverture. 

well he knew himself. "I know Rigaud," he said; "he 
drops the bridle when he gallops, he shows his arm when 
he strikes. For me, I gallop alsq, but know where to 
stop : when I strike I am felt, not seen. Rigaud works 
only by blood and massacre. I know how to put the peo 
pie in movement : but when I appear, all must be calm." 

He said, therefore, to the envoys, " Where are your 
credentials?" " We have none." " I will have nothing 
to do with you." They then sought Francois and Bias- 
sou, two other slaves of strong passions, considerable intel- 
lect, and great influence over their fellow-slaves, and said, 
" Arm, assist the government, put down the English on 
the one hand, and the Spanish on the other " ; and on the 
21st of August, 1791, fifteen thousand blacks, led by 
Francois and Biassou, supplied with arms from the arsenal 
of the government, appeared in the midst of the colony. 
It is believed that Toussaint, unwilling himself to head the 
movement, was still desirous that it should go forward, 
trusting, as proved the case, that it would result in benefit 
to his race. He is supposed to have advised Francois in 
his course, — saving himself for a more momentous hour. 

This is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection of 
St. Domingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its ban- 
ner, "Long live the King"; and on the other, "We 
claim the Old Laws." Singular mottoes for a rebellion ! 
In fact, it was the posse comitatus ; it was the only French 
army on the island ; it was the only force that had a right 
to bear arms ; and what it undertook, it achieved. It put 
Blanchelande in his seat ; it put the island beneath his 
rule. When it was done, the blacks said to the Governor 
thev had created, " Now, grant us one day in seven ; give 
us one day's labor ; we will buy another, and with the two 
buy a third," — the favorite method of emancipation at 
that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years before, 
he refused. He said, " Disarm ! Disperse ! " and the, 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 475 

blacks answered, " The right hand that has saved you, the 
right hand that has saved the island for the Bourbons, may 
perchance clutch some of our own rights " ; and they stood 
still. [Cheering.] This is the first insurrection, if any 
such there were in St. Domingo, — the first determined 
purpose on the part of the negro, having saved the govern- 
ment, to save himself. 

Now let me stop a moment to remind you of one thing. 
I am about to open to you a chapter of bloody history, — 
no doubt of it. Who set the example ? Who dug up 
from its grave of a hundred years the hideous punishment 
of the wheel, and broke Oge, every bone, a living man ? 
Who flared in the face of indignant and astonished Europe 
the forgotten barbarity of quartering the yet palpitating 
body ? Our race. And if the black man learned the les- 
son but too well, it does not lie in our lips to complain. 
During this whole struggle, the record is, — written, mark 
you, by the white man, — the whole picture from the pen- 
cil of the white race, — that for one life the negro took in 
battle, in hot and bloody fight, the white race took, in the 
cool malignity of revenge, three to answer for it. Notice, 
also, that up to this moment the slave had taken no part 
in the struggle, except at the bidding of the government ; 
and even then, not for himself, but only to sustain the 
laws. 

At this moment, then, the island stands thus : The 
Spaniard is on the east triumphant ; the Englishman is 
on the northwest intrenched ; the mulattoes are in the 
mountains waiting ; the blacks are in the valleys victo- 
rious ; one half the French slaveholding element is re- 
publican, the other half royalist ; the white race against 
the mulatto and the black ; the black against both ; the 
Frenchman against the English and Spaniard ; the Span- 
iard against both. It is a war of races and a war of 
nations. At such a moment Toussaint I'Ouverture ap- 
peared. 



476 TOTJ8^4{^"^ L'OUVERTURE. 

He had been born a slave on a plantation in the north 
of the island, — an unmixed negro, — his father stolen from 
Africa. If anything, therefore, that^I say of him to-night 
moves your admiration, remember, the black race claims 
it all, — we have no part nor lot in it. He was fifty years 
old at this time. An old negro had taught him to read. 
His favorite books were Epictetus, Raynal, Military Me- 
moirs, Plutarch. In the woods, he learned some of the 
qualities of herbs, and was village doctor. On the estate, 
the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman. 
At fifty, he joined the army as physician. Before he 
went, he placed his master and mistress on shipboard, 
freighted the vessel with a cargo of sugar and coffee, and 
sent them to Baltimore, and never afterward did he forget 
to send them, year by year, ample means of support. 
And I might add, that, of all tlie leading negro generals, 
each one saved the man under whose roof he was born, 
and protected the family. [Cheering.] 

Let me add another thing. If I stood here to-night to 
tell the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips 
of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint 
the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I here 
to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from 
your hearts, — you, who think no marble white enough on 
which to carve the name of the Father of his Country. 
[Applause.] I am about to tell you the story of a negro 
who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it 
fr\)m the reluctant testimony of Britons, Frenchmen, 
Spaniards, — men who despised him as a negro and a 
slave, and hated him because he had beaten them in many 
a battle. All the materials for his biography are from the 
lips of his enemies. 

The second story told of him is this. About the time 
he reached the camp, the army had been subjected to two 
insults. First, their commissioners, summoned to u'eet 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 477 

the French Committee, were ignominiously and insult- 
ingly dismissed ; and when, afterward, Francois, their 
general, was summoned to a second conference, and went 
to it on horseback, accompanied by two officers, a young 
lieutenant, who had known him as a slave, angered at 
seeing him in the uniform of an officer, raised his riding- 
whip and struck him over tlie shoulders. If he had been 
the savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only 
to breathe the insult to his twenty-five thousand soldiers, 
and they would have trodden out the Frenchmen in blood. 
But the indignant chief rode back in silence to his tent, 
and it was twenty-four hours before his troops heard of 
this insult to their general. Then the word went forth, 
" Death to every white man ! " They had fifteen hun- 
dred prisoners. Ranged in front of the camp, they were 
about to be shot. Toussaint, who had a vein of religious 
fanaticism, like most great leaders, — like Mohammed, like 
Napoleon, like Cromwell, hke John Brown [cheers], — 
he could preach as well as fight, — mounting a hillock, and 
getting the ear of the crowd, exclaimed : " Brothers, this 
blood will not wipe out the insult to our chief; only the 
blood in yonder French camp can wipe it out. To shed 
that is courage ; to shed this is cowardice and cruelty be- 
side " ; — and he saved fifteen hundred lives. [Applause.] 
I cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts. 
This was in 1793. Leap with me over seven years ; 
come to 1800 ; what has he achieved ? He has driven 
the Spaniard back into his own cities, conquered him 
there, and put the French banner over every Spanish 
town ; and for the first time, and almost the last, the island 
obeys one law. He has put the mulatto under his feet. 
He has attacked Maitland, defeated him in pitched battles, 
and permitted him to retreat to Jamaica ; and when the 
French army rose upon Laveaux, their general, and put 
him in chains, Toussaint defeated them, took Laveaux out 



478 ^^^USSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 

of prison, and put him at tlie head of his own troops. The 
grateful French in return named him General-in-Chief. 
Cet Jiomine fait Vouverture partout^ said one, — " This man 
makes an opening everywhere," — hence his soldiers 
named him L'Ouverture, the opening. 

This was the work of seven years. Let us pause a 
moment, and find something to measure him by. You 
remember Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Na- 
poleon, that Cromwell showed the greater military genius, 
if we consider that he never saw an army till he was forty ; 
while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the best mili- 
tary schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured his own 
army ; Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven was placed 
at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. They 
were both successful ; but, says Macaulay, with such dis- 
advantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius. 
Whether you allow the inference or not, you will at least 
grant that it is a fair mode of measurement. Apply it to 
Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army till he was 
forty ; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. 
Cromwell manufactured his own army — out of what ? 
Englishmen, — the best blood in Europe. Out of the 
middle class of Englishmen, — the best blood of the island. 
And with it he conquered what? Englishmen, — their 
equals. This man manufactured his army out of what ? 
Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, de- 
based, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one 
hundred thousand of them imported into the island within 
four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to 
each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, des- 
picable mass, he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at 
what ? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, 
and sent him home conquered [cheers] ; at the most war- 
like blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his 
feet ; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 479 

they skulked home to Jamaica. [Applause.] Now if 
Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier. 
I know it was a small territory ; it was not as large as the 
continent ; but it was as large as that Attica, which, with 
Athens for a capital, has filled the earth with its fame for 
two thousand years. We measure genius by quality, not 
by quantity. 

Further, — Cromwell was only a soldier ; his fame stops 
there. Not one line in the statute-book of Britain can be 
traced to Cromwell ; not one step in the social life of 
England finds its motive power in his brain. The state 
he founded went down with him to his grave. But this 
man no sooner put his hand on the helm of state, than the 
ship steadied with an upright keel, and he began to evince 
a statesmanship as marvellous as his military genius. His- 
tory says that the most statesmanlike act of Napoleon was 
his proclamation of 1802, at the peace of Amiens, when, 
believing that the indelible loyalty of a native-born heart 
is always a sufficient basis on which to found an empire, 
he said : " Frenchmen, come home. I pardon the 'crimes 
of the last twelve years ; I blot out its parties ; I found 
my throne on the hearts of all Frenchmen," — and twelve 
years of unclouded success showed how wisely he judged. 
That was in 1802. In 1800 this negro made a proclama- 
tion ; it runs thus : " Sons of St. Domingo, come home. 
We never meant to take your houses or your lands. The 
negro only asked that liberty which God gave him. Your 
houses wait for you ; your lands are ready ; come and 
cultivate them " ; — and from Madrid and Paris, from Bal- 
timore and New Orleans, the emigrant planters crowded 
home to enjoy their estates, under the pledged word that 
was never broken of a victorious slave. [Cheers.] 

Again, Carlyle has said, * The natural king is one who 
melts all wills into his own." At this moment he turned 
to his armies, — poor, ill-clad, and half-starved, — and 



480 Te«^^NT L'OUVERTURE. 

said to them : Go back and work on these estates you 
have conquered ; for an empire can be founded only on 
order and industry, and you can learn these virtues only 
there. And they went. The French Admiral, who wit- 
nessed the scene, said that in a week his army melted 
back into peasants. 

It was 1800. The world waited fifty years before, in 
1846, Robert Peel dared to venture, as a matter of prac- 
tical statesmanship, the theory of free trade. Adam 
Smith theorized, the French statesmen dreamed, but no 
man at the head of affairs had ever dared to risk it as a 
practical measure. Europe waited till 1846 before the 
most practical intellect in the world, the English, adopted 
the great economic formula of unfettered trade. But in 
1800 this black, with the instinct of statesmanship, said to 
the committee who were draftins^ for him a Constitution : 
" Put at the head of the chapter of commerce that the 
ports of St. Domingo are open to the trade of the world." 
[Cheers.] With lofty indifference to race, superior to all 
envy or prejudice, Toussaint had formed this committee 
of eight white proprietors and one mulatto, — not a sol- 
dier nor a negro on the list, although Haytian history 
proves that, with the exception of Rigaud, the rarest 
genius has always been shown by pure negroes. 

Again, it was 1800, at a time when England was poisoned 
on every page of her statute-book with religious intoler- 
ance, when a man could not enter the House of Commons 
without taking an Episcopal communion, when every 
State in the Union, except Rhode Island, was full of the 
intensest relio;ious bio-otry. This man was a neo-ro. You 
say that is a superstitious blood. He was uneducated. 
You say that makes a man narrow-minded. He was a 
Catholic. Many say that is but another name for intoler- 
ance. And yet — negro. Catholic, slave — he took his 
place by the side of Roger Williams, and said to his com- 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVEETURE. 48i83 

mittee : " Make it the first line of my Constitution that I 
know no difference between religious beliefs." [Ap- 
plause.] 

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back 
with me to the commencement of the century, and select 
what statesman you please. Let him be either American 
or European ; let him have a brain the result of six gen- 
erations of culture ; let him have the ripest training of 
university routine ; let him add to it the better education 
of practical life ; crown his temples with the silver of 
seventy years ; and show me the man of Saxon lineage 
for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel 
rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this 
negro, — rare military skill, profound knowledge of human 
nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust 
a state to the blood of its sons, — anticipating Sir Robert 
Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of 
Roger Williams before any Englishman or American had 
won the riglit ; — and yet this is the record which the 
history of rival states makes up for this inspired black of 
St. Domingo. [Cheers.] 

It was 1801. The Frenchmen who lingered on the 
island described its prosperity and order as almost incred- 
ible. You miglit trust a child with a bag of gold to go 
from Samana to Port-au-Prince without risk. Peace was 
in every household ; the valleys laughed with fertility ; cul- 
ture climbed the mountains ; the commerce of the world 
was represented in its harbors. At this time Europe 
concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon took his 
seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes across 
the Atlantic, and, with a single stroke of his pen, reduced 
Cayenne and Martinique back into chains. He then said 
to his Council, " What shall I do with St. Domingo ? " 
The slaveholders said, " Give it to us." Napoleon turned 
to the Ahh6 Gregoire, " What is your opinion ? " "I 

31 



i82 ^Trm(^" T TT L'OUVERTURE. 

think those men would change their, opinions, if they 
changed their skins." Colonel Vincent, who had been 
private secretary to Toussaint, w»ote a letter to Napoleon, 
in which he said : *' Sire, leave it alone ; it is the happiest 
spot in your dominions ; God raised this man to govern ; 
races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island ; 
for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Repub- 
lic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George , 
III. offered him any title and any revenue if he would 
hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and 
saved it for France." Napoleon turned away from his 
Council, and is said to have remarked,- " I have sixty 
thousand idle troops ; I must find them something to do." 
He meant to say, " I am about to seize the crown ; I dare 
not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers : 
I must give them work at a distance to do.". The gossip 
of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against St. 
Dominso. It is said that the satirists of Paris had chris- 
tened Toussaint, the Black Napoleon ; and Bonaparte hated 
his black shadow. Toussaint had unfortunately once ad- 
dressed him a letter, " The first of the blacks to the first 
of the whites." He did not like the comparison. You 
would think it too slight a motive. But let me remind 
you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists 
of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at 
Versailles, Soulouquerie^ from the name of Soulouque, the 
Black Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order for- 
bidding the use of the word. The Napoleon blood is very 
sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from 
one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition, 
or dislike of this resemblance, — which was very close. 
If either imitated the other, it must have been the white, 
since the negro preceded him several years. They 
were very much alike, and they were very French, — 
French even in vanity, common to both. You remember 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTUEE. 483 

Bonaparte's vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyr- 
amids : " Forty centuries look down upon us." In the 
same mood, Toussaint said to the French captain who 
urged him to go to France in his frigate, " Sir, your ship 
is not large enough to carry me." Napoleon, you know, 
could never bear the military uniform. He hated the 
restraint of liis rank; he loved to put on the gray coat 
of the Little Corporal, and wander in the camp. Tous- 
saint also never could bear a uniform. He wore a plain 
coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the 
slaves. A French lieutenant once called him a maggot 
in a yellow handkerchief. Toussaint took him prisoner 
next day, and sent him home to his mother. Like Napo- 
leon, he could fast many days ; could dictate to three sec- 
retaries at once ; could wear out four or five horses. Like 
Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated 
his plan. He was only a negro, ^nd so, in him, they called 
it hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For 
instance, three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, 
from not firing at the riglit spot. If they thought he was 
in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on 
horseback ; if they thought he was in the city in a house, 
he would be in the field in a tent. They once riddled his 
carriage with bullets ; he was on horseback on the other 
side. The seven Frenchmen who did it were arrested. 
They expected to be shot. The next day was some saint's 
day; he ordered them to be placed before the high altar, 
and, when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness, 
came down from his high seat, repeated it with him, and 
permitted them to go unpunished. [Cheers.] He had 
that wit common to all great commanders, which makes 
its way in a camp. His soldiers getting disheartened, he 
filled a large vase with powder, and, scattering six grains 
of rice in it, shook them up, and said : " See, there is the 
white, there is the black; what are you afraid of?" So 



484 "PilJg^INT L'OUVERTURE. 

when people came to him in great numbers for oiEce, as 
it is reported they do sometimes even in Washington, he 
learned tlie first Avords of a Catholic prayer in Latin, and, 
repeating it, would sa}^, '' Do you undei'stand that ? ' 
*' No, sir." " What ! want an office, and not know L*atin ? 
Go home and learn it ! " 

Then, again, like Napoleon, — like -genius always, — 
he had confidence in his power to rule men. You re- 
member when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis 
XVIII. sent an army against him, Bonaparte descended 
from his carriage, opened his coat, offering his breast to 
their muskets, and saying, " Frenchmen, it is the Em- 
peror ! " and they ranged themselves behind him, Ms sol 
diers, shouting, " Vive V Empereur ! ^^ That was in 1815. 
Twelve years before, Toussaint, finding that four of his 
regiments had deserted and gone to Leclerc, drew his 
sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field to them, 
folded his arms, and said, " Children, can you point a bay- 
onet at me ? " The blacks fell on their knees, praying 
his pardon. His bitterest enemies watched him, and none 
of them charged him with love of money, sensuality, or 
cruel use of power. The only instance in which his 
sternest critic has charged him with severity is this. 
During a tumult, a few white proprietors who had re- 
turned, trusting his proclamation, were killed. His 
nephew. General Moise, was accused of indecision in 
quelling the riot. He assembled a court-martial, and, on 
its verdict, ordered his own nephew to be shot, sternly 
Koman in thus keeping his promise of protection to the 
whites. Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, gen- 
erous in the use of his power, it was against such a man that 
Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclerc, the 
husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand 
of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. 
Among these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto 
rivals and foes. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTUBE. 485 

Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special 
message to be neutral ; and you know neutrality means 
sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants^ [Loud 
and long-continued applause.] England promised neu- 
trality, and the black looked out on the whole civilized 
world marshalled against him. America, full of slaves, 
of course was hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor 
muskets at a very high price. [Laughter.] Mounting 
his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, 
Samana, he looked out on a sight such as no native had 
ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the 
best soldiers of Europe, rounded the point. They were 
soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, 
like Caesar's, had shaken Europe, — soldiers who had 
scaled the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on 
the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, counted the 
flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and, 
turning jto Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come 
to Hayti ; they can only come to make us slaves ; and we 
are lost ! " He then recognized the only mistake of his 
life, — his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led him to 
disband his army. 

Returning to the hills, he issued the only proclamation 
which bears his name and breathes vengeance : " My 
children, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us 
liberty ; France has no right to take it away. Burn the 
cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, 
poison the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to 
make " ; — and he was obeyed. [Applause.] When the 
great William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland 
with troops, he said, " Break down the dikes, give Hol- 
land back to ocean " ; and Europe said, " Sublime ! " 
When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon 
Russia, he said, " Burn Moscow, starve back the invad- 
ers " ; and Europe said, " Sublime ! " This black saw all 



486 limgSAINT L'OUVERTUKE. 

Europe- marshalled to cnish him, and gave to his people 
the same heroic example of defiance. 

It is true, the scene grows bloodier as we proceed. 
But, remember, the w^hite man fitly accompanied his 
infamous attempt to reduce freemen to slavery with every 
bloody and cruel device that bitter and shameless hate 
could invent. Aristocracy is always cruel. The* black 
man met the attempt, as every such attempt should be 
met, with war to the hilt. In his first struggle to gain his 
freedom, he had been generous and merciful, saved lives 
and pardoned enemies, as the people in every age and 
clime have always done when rising against aristocrats. 
Now, to save his liberty, the negro exhausted every 
means, seized every weapon, and turned back the hateful 
invaders with a vengeance as terrible as their own, 
thoua;h even now he refused to be cruel. 

Leclerc sent word to Christophe that he was about to 
land at Cape City. Christophe said, " Toussaint is gov- 
ernor of the island. I will send to him for permission. 
If without it a French soldier sets foot on shore, I will 
burn the town, and fight over its ashes." 

Leclerc landed. Christophe took two thousand ivldte 
men, women, and children, and carried them to the moun- 
tains in safety, then with his own hands set fire to the 
splendid palace which French architects had just finished 
for him, and in forty hours the place was in ashes. The 
battle was fought in its streets, and the French driven 
back to their boats. [Cheers.] Wherever , they went, 
they were met with fire and sword. Once, resisting an 
attack, the blacks. Frenchmen born, shouted the Mar- 
seilles Hymn, and tlie French soldiers stood still ; they 
could not fight the Marseillaise. And it was not till their 
ofiicers sabred them on that they advanced, and then 
they were beaj;en. Beaten in the field, the French then 
took to lies. They issued proclamations, saying, " We do 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 487 

not come to make you slaves ; this man Toussaint tells 
you lies. Join us, and you shall have the rights you 
claim." They cheated every one of his officers, except 
Christophe and Dessalines, and his own brother Pierre, 
and finally these also deserted him, and he was left alone. 
He then sent word to Leclerc, " I will submit. I could 
continue the struggle for years, — could prevent a single 
Frenchman from safely quitting your camp. But I hate 
bloodshf 1. I have fought only for the liberty of my race. 
Guarantee that, I will submit and come in." He took 
the oath to be a faithful citizen ; and on the same crucifix 
Leclerc swore that he should be faithfully protected, and 
that the island should be free. As the French 2feneral 
glanced along the line of his splendidly equipped troops, 
and saw, opposite, Toussaint's ragged, ill-armed followers, 
he said to him, " L'Ouverture, had you continued the 
war, where could you have got arms ? " "I would have 
taken yours," was the Spartan reply. [Cheers.] He 
went down to his house in peace ; it was summer. Le- 
clerc remembered that the fever months were cominsr, 
when his army would be in hospitals, and when one mo- 
tion of that royal hand would swe^p his troops into the 
sea. He was too dangerous to be left at large. So they 
summoned him to attend a council ; and here is the only 
charge made against him, — the only charge. They say he 
was fool enough to go. Grant it; what was the record? 
The white man lies shrewdly to cheat the negro. Knight- 
errantry was truth. The foulest insult you can offer a 
man since the Crusades is. You lie. Of Toussaint, Her- 
niona, the Spanish general, who knew him well, said, 
" He was the purest soul God ever put into a body." Of 
him history bears witness, "He never broke his word." 
Maitland was travelling in the depths of the woods to 
meet Toussaint, when he w^as met by a messenger, and 
told that he was betrayed. He went on, and met Tons- 



488 xmjssAiNT l'Ouvertuke. 

saint, who showed him two letters, — one from the French 
general, offering him any rank if he would put Maitland 
in his power, and the other his reply. It was, " Sir, I 
have promised the Englishman that he shall go back." 
[Cheers.] Let it stand, therefore, that the negro, truth- 
ful as a knight of old, was cheated by his lying foe. 
Which race has reason to b& proud of such a record ? 

But he was not cheated. He was under espionage. 
Suppose he had refused: the government woi Id have 
doubted him, — would have found some cause to arrest 
him. He probably reasoned tlms : " If I go willingly, I 
shall be treated accordingly " ; and he went. The moment 
he entered the room, the officers drew their swords, and 
told him he was prisoner ; and one young lieutenant who 
was present says, " He Avas not at all surprised, but seemed 
\ery sad." They put him on shipboard, and weighed an- 
chor for France. As the island faded from his sight, he 
turned to the captain, and said, " You think you have 
r^ooted up the tree of hberty, but I am only a branch ; I 
have planted the tree so deep that all France can never 
root it up." [Cheers.] Arrived in Paris, he was flung 
into jail, and Napoleoji sent his secretary, Caffarelli, to 
him, supposing he had buried large treasures. He lis- 
tened awhile, then replied, " Young man, it is true I have 
lost treasures, but they are not such as you come to seek." 
He was then sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon 
twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a nar- 
row wmdow, high up on the side, looking out on the snows 
of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor ; in sum- 
mer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of 
the sunny tropic was left to die. From this dungeon he 
wrote two letters to Napoleon. One of them ran thus : — 

" Sire, I am a French citizen. I never broke a law. . By the 
grace of God, I have saved for you the best island of your realm 
Sire, of your mercy grant me justice." 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 489 

Napoleon never answered the letters. The command- 
ant allowed him five fi-ancs a day for food and fuel. Na- 
poleon heard of it, and reduced the sum to three. The 
luxurious usur]oer, who complained that the English gov- 
ernment was stingy because it allowed liim only six thou- 
sand dollars a month, stooped from his throne to cut down 
a dollar to a half, and still Toussaint did not die quick 
enough. 

This dungeon was a tomb. The stoiy is told that, in 
Josepliine's time, a young French marquis was placed 
the*re, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to the 
Empress and prayed for his release. Said Josephine to 
her, " Have a model of it made, and bring it to me." 
Josephine placed it near Napoleon. He said, " Take it 
away, — it is horrible ! " She put it on his footstool, and 
he kicked it from him. She held it to him the third time, 
and said, " Sire, in this horrible dungeon you have put a 
man to die." " Take him out," said Napoleon, and the 
girl saved her lover. In this tomb Toussaint was buried, 
but he did not die fast enough. Finally, the commandant 
was told to go into Switzerland, to. carry the keys of the 
dimgeon with him, and to stay fom* days ; when he re- 
turned, Toussaint was found starved to death. That im- 
perial assassin was taken twelve years after to his prison at 
St. Helena, planned for a tomb, as he had planned that of 
Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in 
pitiful complaints of curtains and titles, of dishes and rides. 
God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh 
the great men of our epoch, the whites against the blacks, 
he do not put that whining child at St. Helena into one 
scale, and into the other the neorro meetincc death like a 
Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy 
dun ere on ! 

From the moment he was betrayed, the negroes began 
to doubt the French, and rushed to arms. Soon every 



490 TOI?S^AINT L'OUVERTUEE. 

negro but Maurepas deserted the French. Leclerc sum- 
moned Maurepas to his side. He came, loyally bringing 
with him five hundred soldiers. Leclerc spiked his epau- 
lettes to his shoulders, shot him, and flung him into the 
sea. He took his five hundi^ed soldiers on shore, shot 
them on the edge of a pit, and tumbled them in. Des- 
salines from the mountain saw it, and, selecting five hun- 
dred French ofiicers from his prisons, hung them on 
separate trees in sight of Leclerc's camp ; and born, as I 
was, not far from Bunker Hill, I have yet found no reason 
to think he did wrong. [Cheers.] They murdered 
Pierre Toussaint's wife at his own door, and after such 
treatment that it was mercy when they killed her. The 
maddened husband, who had but a year before saved the 
lives of twelve hundred white men, carried his next thou- 
sand prisoners and sacrificed them on her grave. 

The French exhausted every form of torture. The 
negroes were bound tocrether and thrown into the sea ; 
any one who floated was shot, — others sunk with cannon- 
balls tied to their feet ; some smothered with sulphur 
fumes, — others strangled, scourged to death, gibbeted ; 
sixteen of Toussaint's officers were chained to rocks in 
desert islands, — others in marshes, and left to be de- 
voured by poisonous reptiles and insects. Rochambeau 
sent to Cuba for bloodhounds. When they arrived, the 
young girls went down to the wharf, decked the hounds 
with ribbons and flowers, kissed their necks, and, seated 
in the amphitheatre, the women clapped their hands to see 
a negro thrown to these dogs, previously starved to rage. 
But the negroes besieged this very city so closely that 
these same girls, in their misery, ate the very hounds they 
had welcomed. 

Then flashed forth that defying courage and sublime 
endurance which show how alike all races are when tried 
m the same furnace. The Roman wife, whose husband 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 491 

Faltered when Nero ordered him to kill himself, seized the 
dagger, and, mortally wounding her own body, cried, 
" Poetus, it is not hard to die." The world records it 
with proud tears. Just in the same spirit, when a negro 
colonel was ordered to execution, and trembled, his wife 
seized his sword, and, giving herself a death-wound, said, 
" Husband, death is sweet when liberty is gone." 

The war went on. Napoleon sent over thirty thousand 
more soldiers. But disaster still followed his efforts. 
What the sword did not devour, the fever ate up. Le- 
clerc died. Pauline carried his body back to France. 
Napoleon met her at Bordeaux, saying, " Sister, I gave 
you an army, — you bring me back ashes." Rochambeau 
— the Rochambeau of our history — left in command of 
eight thousand troops, sent word to Dessalines ; "When 
I take you, I will not shoot you like a soldier, or hang you 
like a white man ; I will whip you to death like a slave." 
Dessalines chased him from battle-field to battle-field, 
from fort to fort, and finally shut him up in Samana. 
Heating cannon-balls to destroy his fleet, Dessalines learned 
that Rochambeau had begged of the British admiral to 
cover his troops with the English flag, and the generous 
negro suffered the boaster to embark undisturbed. 

Some" doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, 
and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best sol- 
diers France ever had, and ask them what they think of 
the negro's sword. And if that does not satisfy you, go 
to PYance, to the splendid mausoleum of the Counts of 
Rochambeau, and to the eight thousand graves of French- 
men who skulked home under the English flag, and ask 
them. And if that does not satisfy you, come home, and 
if it had been October, 1859, you" might have come by 
way of quaking Virginia, and asked her what she thought 
of negro courage. 

You may also remember this, — that we Saxons were 



492 ^^mi^AINT L'OUVERTURE. 

slaves about four hundred years, sold with the land, and 
our fathers never raised a finger to end that slavery. 
They waited till Christianity and civilization, till commerce 
and the discovery of America, melted away their chains. 
Spartacus in Italy led the 'slaves of Rome against the Em- 
press of the world. She murdered him, and crucified 
them. There never was a slave rebellion successful but 
once, and that was in St. Domingo. Every race has 
been, some time or other, in chains. But there never 
was a race that, weakened and degraded by such chattel 
slavery, unaided, tore off its own fetters, forged them into 
swords, and won its liberty on the battle-field, but one, 
and that was the black race of St. Domingo. God m'ant 
that the wise vigor of our government may avert that 
necessity from our land, — may raise into peaceful liberty 
the four million committed to our care, and show under 
democratic institutions a statesmanship as far-sighted as 
that of England, as brave as the negro of Hayti ! 

So much for the courage of the negro. Now look at 
his endurance. In 1805 he said to the white men, " This 
island is ours ; not a white foot shall touch it." Side by 
side with him stood the South American republics, planted 
by the best blood of the countrymen of Lope de Vega and 
Cervantes. They topple over so often that you could no 
more daguerrotype their crumbling fragments than you 
could the waves of the ocean. And yet, at their side, the 
negro has kept his island sacredly to himself. It is said 
that at first, with rare patriotism, the Haytien government 
ordered the destruction of all the sugar plantations remain- 
hig, and discouraged its culture, deeming that the tempta- 
tion which lured the French back again to attempt their 
enslavement. Burn over New York to-night, fill up her 
canals, sink every ship, destroy her railroads, blot out 
every remnant of education from her sons, let her be 
ignorant and penniless, with nothing but her hands to 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 493 

Degin the world again, — how much could she do in sixty 
years? And Europe, too, would lend you money, but 
she will not lend Hayti a dollar. Hayti, from the ruins 
of her colonial dependence, is become a civilized state, the 
seventh nation in the catalogue of commerce with this 
country, inferior in morals and education to none of the 
West Indian isles. Foreign merchants trust her courts 
as«willingly as they do our own. Thus far, she has foiled 
the ambition of Spain, the greed of England, and the 
malicious statesmanship of Calhoun. Toussaint made her 
what" she is. In this work there was grouped around him 
a score of men, mostly &£ pure negro blood, who ably 
seconded his efforts. They were able in war and skilful 
in civil affairs, but not, like him, remarkable for that rare 
mingling of high qualities which alone maizes true great- 
ness, and insures a man leadership among those otherwise 
almost his equals. Toussaint was indisputably their chief. 
Courage, purpose, endurance, — these are the tests. He 
did plant a state so deep that all the world has not been 
able to root it up. 

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his 
way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of 
blood. This man never broke his Avord. " No Retalia- 
tion " was his great motto and the rule of his life ; and 
the last words uttered to his son in France were these : 
*' My boy, you will one day go back to St. Domingo ; for- 
get that France murdered your father." I would call 
him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the 
state he founded went down with him into his grave. I 
would call him Washino^ton, but the great Virginian held 
slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit 
the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions. 

You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history, 
not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty 
years hf^nce, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of His- 



494 TTmi^TITT L'OUVERTURE. 

tory will put Phocion for the Greek, and Brutus for the 
Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose 
Washington as the bright, consummate flower of our ear- 
lier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of Our noon- 
day [thunders of applause], then, dipping her pen in the 
sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the 
name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint 
L'OuvERTURE. [Long-continued applause."] * 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE.* 



I HAVE been requested to speak to you to-day on 
the subject of a Metropolitan Police. That plan has 
already been presented, two or three years ago, to this 
community, and, of late, very elaborately and eloquently 
argued before a committee of the Legislature, by Edward 
L. Peirce, Esq., and still more comprehensively and in 
detail by Charles M. Ellis, Esq. ; but it is one of vital 
importance to the welfare and progress of our city, and, 
until the object be achieved, it can never be too frequently 
considered and urged. Other cities have led the way in 
this path, years ago. The capital of the civilized world, 
London, many years ago, found herself utterly unable to 
contend with the evils of accumulated population, — found 
municipal machinery utterly inadequate for the security 
of life or property in her streets ; and the national gov- 
ernment, by the hand of Sir Robert Peel, assumed the 
police regulation of that cluster of .towns which we com- 
monly call London, though the plan does not include the 
city proper. New York, on our continent, about six 
years ago, followed the example ; Baltimore and Cincin- 
nati have done likewise to a greater or less extent, and so 
also have some of the other Western cities. The experi- 
ence of all great accumulations of property and population 

♦ A Discourse delivered before the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, 
in the Melodeon, Boston, April 5, 1863. 



496 ^.^ietropolitan police. • 

reads us a lesson, that the execution of the laws therein 
demand extra consideration and peculiar machinery. The 
self-organized Safety Committees of San Francisco and 
other cities prove the same fact. Indeed, great cities are 
nests of great vices, and it has been the experience of re- 
publics that great cities are an exception to the common 
rule of self-governed communities. Neither New York, 
nor New Orleans, nor Baltimore — none of the great 
eities — has found the ballot-box of its individual voters 
a sufficient protection, through a police organization 
Great cities cannot be protected on the theory of re- 
publican institutions. We may like it or not, — seventy 
years have tried the experiment, and, so far, it is a fail- 
ure ; and if there is no resource outside of the city limits, 
then a self-governed great city is, so far as my experience 
goes, the most uncomfortable which any man who loves 
free speech can live in. It is no surprise, therefore, that 
we ask you no longer to let the police force represent the 
voters of Boston. Hitherto, the police regulations in the 
city of Boston have been modelled on those of a small 
town ; that is, the inhabitants themselves have called into 
existence a body of constables,. in fact, to execute the laws 
of the State and the by-laws of the city. Our text, in 
presenting this subject to you, is this : in Boston, as every- 
where else, where large numbers are brought together 
and great masses of property are found, a police force ap- 
pointed by the voters -of the place cannot be relied on to 
execute the laws ; and, in order to secure their full and 
impartial execution, it has been found necessary else- 
where, and I shall attempt to show you that it is neces- 
sary here, to put the control of the police force into other 
hands than those of the voters of the place. That is our 
claim, — that the men of the peninsula, like those of other 
great cities, are not to be trusted with the execution of the 
State laws, but that executive power must be based on 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 497 

broader foundations. Such a course ishio uncommon ma- 
chinery in democratic institutions. We put the inter- 
pretation of the laws — the judiciary — not into the hands 
of any local liiunicipal body, but the interpretation of the 
State laws is in the hands of persons appointed by the 
whole State. I invoke the same principle for theii' exe- 
cution, — following old republican precedents, as I shall 
shortly show. 

In order to sustain this claim before you, I ought to 
show three or four things. First, that in important par- 
ticulars — important particulars — the law has failed of 
execution ; that good and vitally important laws have 
failed of execution. Secondly, I ought to show you that 
this failure is due to the machinery which the city puts in 
motion for the execution of the laws. Thirdly, that a bet- 
ter machinery may be found. And, fourthly, that it is 
important for the welfare of the State that the attempt to 
find a better machinery should be made. 

My first point is to show you that in important particu- 
lars, where great and grave interests are involved, the laws 
have failed of execution. You perceive that this involves, 
in fact, an indictment against the city government. It is, 
in reality, arraigning the government of the city for failure 
to do its duty. Before I pass to it, therefore, let me make 
one protest. I do not come here to find fault with indi- 
vidual policemen. I think our body of police is as good, 
on the average, as that of any great city I know. I think 
upon all trying occasions they have done their duty, as far 
as they have been permitted, and have always shown full 
capacity to do their whole duty. Neither do I come here 
to arraign the individuals of the city government ; not, 
however, on account of the same excuse, but because I 
deem it unnecessary. They are mere puppets, fluttering 
before us for a little while ; they are only victims of a 
great system, which they did not originate and cannot con- 

32 



498 A*"l!!in^0P0LiTAN 



POLICE. 



trol. Looking over the last dozen years, considering that 
the Mayor and Aldermen during those years have been, 
in the aggregate, only a standing committee appointed by 
the grog-shops of the peninsula, it has been no honor, but 
a shame, to hold one of those offices. No man with a full 
measure of self-respect could accept such an office. All 
politics necessitates questionable compliances ; ' but this 
serfdom touches a base depth. It is not however neces- 
sary, and certainly not within my plan to-day, to arraign in- 
dividuals. I am merely criticising a system which throws 
up into unfitting places and undue importance men who 
have no real right to the power which they are wholly 
unable or unwilKng to use. 

To return now to my first point, I am to show you that, 
in many important particulars, the laws have failed of exe- 
cution. I shall take, in the first place, temperance. Some 
men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, 
narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little 
minds, weak women, and weaker men. On the contrary, 
I regard it as second only to one or two others of the pri- 
mary reforms of this age, and for this reason. Every race 
has its peculiar temptation ; every clime has its specific sin. 
The tropics and tropical . races are tempted to one form 
of sensuality ; the colder and temperate regions, and our 
Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus 
of drink and food. In old times our heaven was a drunken 
revel. We relieve ourseh'es from the over-weariness of 
constant and exhausting toil by intoxication. Science has 
brought a cheap means of drunkenness within the reach 
of every individual. National prosperity and free institu- 
tions have put into the hands of almost every workman the 
means of being drunk for a week on the labor of two or 
three hours. With that blood and that temptation, we 
have adopted democratic institutions, where the law has 
no sanction but the purpose and virtue of the masses. The 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 499 

statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on 
the liearts of the people. A drunken people can never be 
the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone 
neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, there- 
fore, the title-deeds of whose estates and the safety of 
whose lives depend upon the tranquillity of the streets, 
upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice 
which brutalizes the average mass of mankind, and tends 
to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt 
leaders, is necessarily a Stab at the very life of the nation. 
Against such a vice is marshalled the Temperance Refor- 
mation. That my sketch is no mere fancy picture, every 
one of you knows. Every one of you can glance back 
over your own path, and count many and many a one 
among those who started from the goal at your side, with 
equal energy and perhaps greater promise, who has found 
a drunkard's grave Ions; before this. The brio;htness of 
the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope and blessing 
and stay of many a family, — you know, every one of you 
who has reached middle life, how often on your path you 
set up the warning, " Fallen before the temptations of 
the streets ! " Hardly one house in this city, whether it 
be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether 
it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest econ- 
omy, no matter which, — hardly a house that does not 
count, among sons or nephews, some victim 'of this vice. 
The skeleton of this warning sits at every board. The 
whole world is kindred in this suffering. The country 
mother launches her boy with trembling upon the tempta- 
tions of city life ; the father trusts his daughter anxiously 
to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck 
intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up. 
Alas ! how often are their worst forebodings more than 
fulfilled I I have known a case — and probably many of 
you can recall some almost equal to it — where one worthy 



600 A^if^ROPOLITAN POLICE. 

woman cuuld count father, brother, husband, and son-m 
law, all drunkards, — no man among her near kindred, 
except her son, who was not a vittim of this vice. Like 
all other appetites, this finds resolution weak when set 
against j;he constant presence of temptation. This is the 
evil. How are the laws relating to it executed in this 
city ? Let me tell you. 

First, there has been great discussion of this evil, — 
wide, earnest, patient discussion, for thirty-five years. 
The whole community has been stirred by the discussion 
of this question. Finally, after various experiments, the 
majority of the State decided that the method to stay this 
evil was to stop the open sale of intoxicating drink. They 
left moral suasion still to address the individual, and set 
themselves as a community to close the doors of tempta- 
tion. Every man acquainted with his own nature or with 
society knows that weak virtue, walking through our^ 
streets, and meeting at every tenth door (for that is the 
average) the temptation to drink, must fall ; that one 
must be a moral Hercules to stand erect. To prevent 
the open sale of intoxicating liquor has been the method 
selected by the State to help its citizens to be virtuous ; 
in other words, the State has enacted what is called the 
Maine Liquor Law, — the plan of refusing all licenses to sell, 
to be drunk on the spot or elsewhere, and allowing only 
an official agent to sell for medicinal purposes and the 
arts. You may drink in your own parlors, you may make 
what indulgence you please your daily rule, the State does 
not touch you there ; there you injure only yourself, and 
those you directly influence ; that the State cannot reach. 
But when you open your door and say to your fellow-citi- 
zens, " Come and indulge," the State has a right to ask, 
" Li what do you invite them to indulge ? Is it in something 
that helps, or something that harms, the community ? " 

I will try to show you, in a moment, on what grounds 



A METKOPOLITAN POLICE. 601 

the State decided that these numberless open doors harmed 
the community, and that the method to be adopted was to 
shut them up. The majority, after full argument in dis- 
trict school-houses, the streets, and the State-House, from 
pul2:)its, lyceum platforms, and everywhere else, decided 
that prohibition of the traffic was the only effective method. 
The law was put upon the statute-book. A reluctant mi- 
nority went to the Legislature, and endeavored to repeal 
or amend it, alleging that this was not a good law ; and 
they were voted down. Again they went, — were voted 
down. A third time they went, — and were voted down. 
They then appealed to the courts, and said, " This is not a 
constitutional law." The courts said, " It is." If anything 
ever had the decided, unmistakable sanction of a majority 
of the people of this Commonwealth, the Maine Liquor Law 
has it. After a quarter of a century of discussion, it was 
enacted ; three times assailed, it was maintained ; subjected 
to the crucible of the court, it came out pure gold. We 
have a right to say that it is the matured, settled purpose 
of the majority of the Commonwealth ; if the majority have 
a right to govern, that law is to govern. Is it not so ? If 
not, let the minority assail again the Gibraltar of the statute. 
But meanwhile it, like all other laws not immoral, is to be 
obeyed. I have not, therefore, to argue to-day whether 
the law is good or not, whether it is wise or not. That is 
settled. It is good and wise in the opinion of the Com- 
monwealth. The era of public opinion is finished, that of 
law has commenced. This is the history of all legislation. 
Do not find fault with us for enacting, in due time, public 
opinion into a statute. Where did all statutes come from ? 
Hundreds of years ago, men argued the question, '' Shall 
one man own a separate piece of land ? " They argued 
it, and settled that he should. That became a statute. 
They then began to argue the quesdon, " Shall he trans- 
mit' to his children by will ? " They argued that for cen- 



502 A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 

turies, then said, " Yes," and enacted it. Nobody now 
goes behind those statutes. Hundreds of years ago, our 
race argued the question, " Shall a man have one wife or 
three ? " We settled that he should have but one ; it is 
the law of the Commonwealth. 

The era of discussion and opinion is over ; the era of 
legislation has come, — the time when the minority sits 
down and obeys. With all great questions, covering im- 
portant interests, there is a time when public opinion 
stereotypes itself into statutes. Land, harvests, marriage, 
the laws against burgJary and theft, settled themselves 
years ago. If I raise a harvest, it is mine ; that is the 
law of the land. There was a time when it was a ques- 
tion ; it is not a question now. So with temperance and 
the Maine Liquor Law. Time was w^hen the question 
whether a man had a right to sell liquor openly, licensed 
or not, was discussed ; we have passed that point, and 
reached the time when the majority — in other words, the 
State — decrees that these shops shall be shut. 

Now let me show you, in a few words, ivhy it should 
decree that. In order more clearly to show this, let me 
go back a little, and ask how did the Mayor and Alder- 
men, the City, meet this Maine Liquor Law ? They said, 
"You may decree it if you please, we won't execute it. 
You say we shall not license anybody, but we will effect 
the same thing, for we will let everybody. sell, except just 
those whom we should not have licensed." These are 
the exact words of the order to the police some years 
ago. The Chief of Police replied to a question from the 
Massachusetts Temperance Society, " We have directions 
never to prosecute a liquor-seller, unless he be one who 
would not have received a license under the old license 
act." In other words, the State says, " On mature con- 
sideration, I prohibit J:he sale." The City says, "I shall 
allow it, — help yourself!" Those whom it would 'not 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE 503 

have licensed are " nuisances," as it calls them ; — houses 
vulgar, noisy, disorderly ; kept, as the Dogberry of the 
Board of Aldermen told us at the State House, by 
"imbecile old men and ancient women," — as the con- 
stable of Shakespeare's play arrested all " vagrom men." 
That is the position of the city. The law is intentionally 
and avowedly set aside. The city government announces 
that it does not intend to obey it ; makes no effort, and 
never has made -any, to enforce it. What is the result ? 
The result is, that there are at least three thousand places 
m the city where liquor is publicly and continually sold. 
These consist partly of dram-shops, partly of gambling 
saloons, partly of houses of prostitution. They number in 
all more than three thousand. I am giving an under esti- 
mate of an average for two or three years. What are the 
results of these three thousand places of sale ? Eight mil- 
lion dollars' worth of liquor is sold in this city for retail 
trade, annually ; and three million dollars' worth is annu- 
ally retailed on the peninsula. With what result? With 
this. They produce poverty and crime to this extent : — 
We arrest for drunkenness alone, on an average for the last 
three years, about seventeen thousand persons annually ; 
that is, a little less than one tenth of the population. 
There are between twenty-five and thirty thousand per- 
sons relieved for poverty by overseers of the poor, and by 
the Provident Association, — poverty caused by intemper- 
ance. That is, every seventh man in the city is a pauper, 
helped by the community ; every tenth man in the city is 
a criminal, arrested ^by the police. Let us look at that a 
moment. I say every seventh man is a pau[:ter, relieved 
by the help of the community. Poverty, wholesome 
poverty, is no unmixed evil ; it is the motive power that 
throws a man up to guide and control the community ; it 
is the spur that often wins the race ; it is the trial that 
calls out, like fire, all the deep, great qualities of a man's 



504 A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 

nature. That poverty is no evil, — at least, it is no un- 
mixed evil ; but poA^erty which is caused by drunkenness, 
— for I am only taking, in these twenty-five thousand 
persons, the poverty that is traceable to intemperance,—* 
the poverty that is caused by drunkenness has what 
history ? The father is a drunkard ; the mother often 
imitates him ; the self-respect of the family is lost ; the 
home is gone ; it is a scene of quarrel and degradation ; 
the children are thrown neglected on the streets, with no 
food, no education, no moral sense developed, — the fright- 
ful and fruitful source of every vice known to the civil 
code. This feeds the gallows, fills the street with im- 
purity, makes thieves and burglars. Out of such houses 
flows a constant supply for all forms of crime. Without 
the open and tiontinued sale of drink, almost every hell 
of the gambler would be closed ; he would have few vic- 
tims. He would find few men in the mood to be victim- 
ized. Without open places for the sale of liquor, the 
houses of prostitution could not be maintained ; that is 
the testimony of all experience in every city. To that 
shameless pit woman seldom sinks, except when betrayed 
by drink, and, even when once ruined, could not bear 
such a life unless nature was daily stupefied by intoxica- 
tion. Nine tenths of those sent to the House of Industry 
are common drunkards. Intemperance is one of the most 
productive of all causes of insanity. " Truancy " finds its 
" cause of causes " in intemperance. Said the Chief of 
Police, three or four years ago, " Intemperance is the 
direct origin of more poverty, more crjme, and consequent 
suffering, tWan all other causes combined." Twenty-five 
thousand men reduced to poverty in a year, or at least 
every year relieved by the public. 

Now let me go to the schools. Twenty-five thousand is 
an average estimate of the children who attend our public 
schools. The city pours out a quarter, of a million a year 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 505 

to mould those young souls, step by step, to virtue, to 
make them good citizens. Twenty-five thousand with 
one hand it lifts up ; with the other, it tempts twenty-five 
thousand into pollution and crime. It spends four hundred 
and seventy-sevQu thousand dollars a year to do it ; for 
that is the cost of our police force, of our Overseers of the 
Poor, of our Lunatic Asylums (a large portion of whose 
inmates are rendered insane by intemperance), our House 
of Correction and House of Industry. You might as well 
take a third of a million of dollars, and toss it off the end 
of Long Wharf, — we should be richer at the end of the 
year. Leave all the children idle in the streets, shut up 
the grog-shops, shut up the schools, throw a third of a 
million into the water, and the city would be better off on 
the thirty-first day of December than she is now. 

The Mayor and Aldermen, to whom you choose to give 
the police, take with one hand two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars of your money and mine to educate twen- 
ty-five thousand children, and with the other they tear out 
a law from the statute-book in. order to ruin twenty-five 
thousand adults. The inefficiency of the Mayor and Alder- 
men makes it exactly the same as if the cost of our school 
system were thrown into the dock from the end of Long 
Wharf. We know just as well what educates drunkards 
as what educates a school-boy. The Parker House, the 
Tremont House, the Revere House, and the Howard 
Saloon educate intemperance exactly as the Latin School 
educates youth. One educates for heaven, the other for 
hell ; and the city government says it shall be so. 

I am perfectly serious on this ground. I know the 
value of the common schools of Massachusetts. It makes 
my house worth a thousand dollars more to-day ; it makes 
my right of free speech doubly valuable ; it makes my life 
safer ; it makes it happier and more honorable to live in 
this Commonwealth. That is the value of the common- 



606 T'^WI^lQPOLITAN POLICE. 

scHool system, which at great expense educates the chil- 
dren of the State. By its side stands your State system 
for breaking up the intemperance of the city. I do not 
say that the Mayor or the Aldermen could prevent' it all. 
I know well the difficulties. I only ask of any man an 
honest effort ; I only ask for evidence that the first step is 
taken in that direction, — that there is a willingness, a 
disposition, to do it. A great deal could be prevented. 
The mob which broke up our Tremont Temple meeting, 
two years ago, reeled into it from the gorgeous grog-shops 
which surround the Temple. Where do they get their 
unblushing shamelessness and so-called respectability ? 
They get it from the fact that your Governors, your 
Judges, your Senators, your lawmakers, meet week after 
week, and month after month, in these very places, to 
violate the law which they have placed upon the statute- 
book. No wonder they are ashamed to execute the laws 
which they break before the very sun and noonday of 
Massachusetts. 

Such are the reasons for .the Law. One half the crim- 
inals of the State are found in the city of Boston. We 
have one sixth of the popvdation, and yet we have more 
than one half the criminals. We have one sixth of the pop- 
ulation, but we pay about one half of the criminal expenses 
of the State of Massachusetts, — just three times our proper 
proportion. What does it come from ? I am not to charge 
it on any particular corporation ; I am to charge it to a 
eystem. It is the massing up of one third of the capital of 
the State, and one sixth the population on this peninsula. 
That makes a new order of thing's, one callino; for a new 
machinery to check crime, — a hot-bed, where all the ten- 
dencies to crime become doubled and trebled, where the 
dangerous classes of the comimunity get undue power. It 
is because of this peculiarity that we need a different sys- 
tem from what the country does. Up to a certain point 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 507 

our city government has always acknowledged this. For 
instance, in a small country town of a few thousand inhab- 
itants they have two or three constables. Nobody knows 
who tliey are. You might visit half a dozen houses, and 
they could not tell you. Only once or twice in a year, on 
some festive or other occasion, a town meeting, a picnic, 
or something of the kind, is he ever seen or needed. He 
may execute a writ once in a while. If there is any disor- 
der in the town, a citizen takes notice of it, reports it to a 
justice of the peace, and the difficulty is cured. That is a 
sufficient machinery for a sm.all town. But when you 
have a large and dense population, great wealth invested 
in certain dangerous and tempting forms, you cannot trust 
the execution of the laws to the volunteer efforts of the 
citizens ; you must have a large body of police constantly 
in the streets, ever on the alert, with grave and extraor- 
dinary powers, to watch criminals and follow them up. 
That has been found necessary. Now the question is 
whether something further is not necessary also. The 
returns for ten years show that forty-two per cent of 
the average population of this county was arrested for 
crime, while, in other counties, the number arrested was 
only one, two, or three per cent. Why this difference ? 
Because a city necessarily induces greater temptations, 
greater dangers, and more frequent crimes. It needs, 
therefore, a more stringent machinery to execute the laws. 
Instead of that, in regard to this temperance law, the 
city government defy it. They themselves pay — or 
did pay till' within a year or two, I will not speak of the 
present year, for I have not consulted the reports — about 
a thousand dollars a month out of the city treasury for the 
indulgences of the Board of Aldermen and Common-Coun- 
cilmen at an illegal liquor-shop, which no one of them had 
a right to see without presenting it to the courts within 
twenty-four hours. In tliat disgraceful Anthony Burns 



508 'J^I^ROPOLITAN POLICE. 

and Sims experience of the city, upon which I am shortly 
to speak, one of the melancholy features of city sin that 
day was, that the men illegally called out to defy the State 
laws contracted a bill, within sight of the Supreme Court, 
within sight of City Hall, of between one and two thou- 
sand dollars, for liquor and food furnished them at an 
illegal grog-shop, by order of the city. 

Let me leave this question a moment, and turn to an- 
other, — free speech. Free speech is so Aatal an element 
of civil life, so important a privilege, that the framers of 
our government were not willing to leave it to the law, — 
they enshrined it in the Constitution. It was so funda- 
mental, that it could not be left to annual legislation ; it 
was grouted and dovetailed into the very first stratum of 
the foundation of the State. Now, the class of men who 
have had the ordering of city affairs have never, for the 
last twenty years, attempted to protect free speech on this 
peninsula. Let me tell you what I mean. If a man like 
the editor of the Boston Post, like the Hon. Edward Ev- 
erett, like Mr. Sumner, any popular person in the com- 
munity, wished to hold a meeting on this peninsula, he 
could always do it ; but if any set of men who are unpop- 
ular wanted to hold a meeting here, it depended entirely 
upon the mood of the mob that month whether they could 
hold it or not. These very walls could testify, if they had 
voice, how many dozen times they have seen their occu- 
pants, paying an honest price for a day's use of them, 
disturbed hour after hour, and finally, perhaps, in some 
instances, the meeting broken up, by a crowd of boys 
that the right hand of one policeman could have quelled ; 
and when individuals, the very lessees of this hall, would 
take one of these disturbers to the courts, he was set free, 
and the persons who interfered threatened with a suit. 
You know that the trustees of the hall from which you 
have just removed for a season sat on one occasion until 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 509 

midnight, to decide whether they would dare to risk their 
property when the Mayor of the city had let it be known 
that he did not intend to defend it against the mob of the 
streets. You know too, or you might know, that the 
same anxious scene of consultation went on among the 
trustees of the Tremont Temple, again and again, whether 
they would dare to risk their building, when the city au- 
thorities had unblushingly and publicly declared that they 
would not protect free speech. You know also, that, 
when the Massachusetts Antislavery Society* was mobbed 
out of its hall by the Mayor of the city, the members of 
the Legislature refrained from offering the Society the use 
of the State-House, though wishing to do so, because the 
Executive informed them that he had no means to pro- 
tect the State's property against the grog-shops of the 
peninsula. Macaulay says, speaking of James the Sec- 
ond's disturbed reign : " On such occasions, it will ever be 
found that the human vermin, which, neglected by minis- 
ters of state and ministers of religion, — barbarians in the 
midst of civilization, heathen in the midst of Christianity, 
— who burrow among all physical and moral pollution in 
the cellars and garrets of great cities, will rise at once into 
terrible importance." It was when that class of the com- 
munity found that the Mayor was willing to lead them, 
and that they could riot in the most fashionable drinking- 
saloons free of expense, that your Governor dared not 
trust the State-House to an orderly and legal assemblage 
of the citizens of Massachusetts. It was at a time when 
one of the most efficient of the Chiefs of Police said, 
*' Give me thirty men, and an order^ and I will quell that 
mob at once." The difficulty was not that it could not be 
quelled. That class which Macaulay describes never faces 
the law until it has bribed it. The moment the court 
turns its determined countenance upon them, they retire 
to cellars and garrets again. One of the Aldermen of the 



510 "^^^mETilOPOLITAN POLICE. 

city said recently, in the State-Honse, that these moba 
were only "watermelon frolics, — the pounding of men 
with the soft side of a cushioi\" ; but it was a cushion 
that the Governor dared not trust to touch the State- 
House ; it was a mob which the Mayor said, in excuse 
for inefficiency, that he had not force enough to control. 
PerhajiB it would not be disrespectful to ask that these 
several city dignitaries would arrange beforehand, and 
make their lame excuses at least consistent. There is a 
class of whom an old proverb affirms that it needs to have 
" long memories." 

Fellow-citizens, for the last five years, I have been able 
to make in New York, in perfect quiet, with the unso- 
licited protection of the police, the same speech which I 
could not make to you without being surrounded by fifty 
armed friends. Again and again have I proved this, dur- 
ing the last five years. In the city of New York, the 
common sewer of the continent, where wealth is massed 
up by uncounted millions, where the criminals of all na- 
tions take refuge, any man could speak his mind for the 
last five years ; and if the journals threatened him with 
violence, he need not go begging to the City Hall, as 
we vainly used to do here ; the authorities would take 
notice unsolicited, and see to it that he was protected. 
But at the same time, in our own city, of one quarter 
part of the inhabitants, it was impossible, without the aid 
of armed friends, to utter the same words. Why is this? 
It is no fault of individuals, as I said before. Three thou- 
sand places where drink is sold ! Do I exaggerate when 
I say that each one of those places represents a voter ? 
Mr. Ellis has said, with great force, that every one of 
those places represents at least ten men whom it influ- 
ences, which would make thirty thousand, — and doubt- 
less his estimate understates the fact ; but I am not going 
to speak of those whom those places influence. I am 



A METROPOIITAN POLICE. • 511 

going to speak of the voters which they send to the polls, 
and I certainly shall not exaggerate if I say, that each one 
of them influences one voter, — the owner of the shop, 
the keeper, the tender, or the frequenter of it. Such 
liquor-sellers are generally voters. If not, every one has 
a father, brother, servant, barkeeper, landlord, men of 
whom he buys his supplies, frequenters of his bar. Cer- 
tainly, I do not make too large an estimate when I say 
that, on an average, each one of these places controls one 
vote. There are three thous'and voters, — indeed, I 
should not exaggerate if I said five thousand. About 
fifteen thousand voters on this peninsula usually go to the 
polls, sometimes twenty-two thousand, though very rarely. 
Now, three thousand voters could always hold the balance 
in such a constituency, — Republican, Democratic, Catho- 
lic, Protestant, — crumbled up as an independent commu- 
nity necessarily is. With all these inevitable varieties of 
opinion and purpose, three thousand men, bound together 
by one idea, one interest, with one purpose in view, and 
demanding one thing, and nothing more, who know what 
they want, stand together for it, and throw their whole 
weight to secure it, can always hold the balance. There 
never was a city election which that number of votes 
massed together could not control. I say, therefore, with- 
out the slightest wish to be personally offensive, that the' 
liquor-shops of Boston choose our Mayors. What is tht 
result ? The result is, that it is as much a bar(2:ain as if il 
were recorded in the registry of deeds, that the promi- 
nent aspirants for city office shall not execute the lawi 
against the liquor-shops. 1 make no special charge against 
the Mayor and Aldermen, — they are as good as most of 
us. They want votes ; it is the American failing, — most 
men want votes. One man wants to be Mayor, another 
man wants to be Alderman, a third wants to be *SherifF, 
and a fourth wants to be Common-Councilman. Very 



612 " ''^iNltETROPOLITAN POLICE. 



well ; here stand the party that Avant something, and 
there stand the party that have something to sell. They 
have their votes to give. It is understood that they will 
give them to the man who will do the least to execute the 
Maine Law. The baro-ain is not acknowledged before a 
justice of the peace, nor recorded in the registry of 
deeds ; but every sensible man in the city knows of its 
existence ; and these men walk into office because those 
will that they shall. The liquor-dealers say, "This is 
the condition : shut your eyes upon us ! " The conse- 
quence is, that both parties, all parties, are obliged to bow 
their necks to that yoke, and, with rare exceptions, there 
cannot be an Alderman nor a Mayor of the city elected, 
who is not understood to be' willing to shut his eyes to 
that crime, and leave the law of the State unexecuted. 
It has been so, it always must be so while these elements 
of civic strength exist, and are thus tempted to exert 
themselves. 

The reason why the law is not executed in favor of free 
speech is germane and sister to this ; it is, that the men 
.who are interested in these drinking-shops, and the men 
whose votes they can command, are of the class which 
hates progress and freedom, — is naturally antagonistic to 
them ; and any designing leader can stir up such a mass, 
and fling it at virtue and order and liberty. Hence these 
consequences. Their agents, of their own natural bias, 
run greedily to do such agreeable work. 

For the last ten or thirteen years, this has been the 
character of the city government. They have said to 
the State, " We will not execute your law." Now, law 
consists of four things, — a statute, a policeman to arrest 
the offender, a jury to try him, and a judge to sentence 
him. The Constitution says, we shall have judges as 
*' impartial as the lot of humanity admits." We have 
them. Appointed, how ? By the State. The other end 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 513 

of the telegraph is a man to bring the offender before the 
judge. What is the use of a judge ? He cannot move 
of himself; he is powerless if you do not bring the crimi- 
nals before him. But the city government of Boston, 
chosen by this machinery I have spoken of, says to its 
police officers, '' Don't you furnish that judge with any 
criminals ; shut your eyes upon them ! " Then, again, if 
one is arrested, by any accident, what more ? Why, this : 
the statute says that our jurymen shall be drawn from a 
box, in which the names of citizens of good moral charac- 
ter and sound judgment, free from all legal exceptions, are 
put. The city weeds out the jury-box on another plan. 
In all trials that had antislavery or temperance in them, 
you might be certain of one thing, — you would never see 
an Abolitionist nor a temperance man on the jury. If he 
got there, it was an accident, and there were always 
enough to neutralize him. It is just like the black ele- 
ment. We have several thousand black men in our 
community ; you have never seen a black man on a jury 
but once, and that was an accident, and he was not allowed 
to sit, though he had been regularly drawn. Many of 
them are of good moral character, but their names never 
get into the box ; or, if they get in, never come out. So 
of a man known distinctively as an Abolitionist ; if his 
name goes in, it never comes out. So of a man known as 
a temperance man ; rarely does his name come out. But 
liquor-dealers have always been abundant on juries ; no 
jury was trusted alone without them. If the State furnishes 
good judges, and the city, at the other end, furnishes no 
criminals, or, when one is by chance caught, fortifies him 
with a jury that will disagree on his side, how is the law 
to be executed ? As long as the city government is chosen 
by men whose interest is on that side, how can. it be other- 
"wise ? How is the law to be executed, when you have 
intrusted its execution to men who do not wish or mean 



514 'j^etropolitain^ police. 

to execute it, — who were elected expressly not to exe- 
cute it, and have the strongest motive not to do so ? No 
matter how good individual policemen are, while such men 
rule them. You know when Bailie Nicol Jarvie, in Scott's 
immortal novel, let Rob Roy out of jail, — he was an 
alderman, a bailie, and let him out, — he said to Rob, 
" If you continue to be such a thief, you ought to have a 
doorkeeper in every jail in Scotland." '' O no. Bailie," 
replied Rob, " it is just as weel to have a hailie in ilka 
borough." It answers the same purpose to have a servile 
and complacent Mayor and Aldermen as to have a base 
policeman, because they arrange the juries, and they fetter 
and command the police. The consequence has been, that 
there has been no effort to execute the law. The defence 
put in is, " We cannot execute the law." The Mayor 
said of the riots of 1860-61, '' We can't put them down." 
The reply of his own policemen was, " Thirty of us will 
put them down, if you will allow us." The reply of the 
Abolitionist was, " When did you ever make an effort to 
put them down ? The only time you ever stood on 
Tremont Temple platform and issued an order, it was 
obeyed ; the mob recognized you as their leader." But 
men say at the State-House, in reply to the eloquent argu- 
ment of Mr. Ellis, — Mr. Healy, Alderman Amory, said, 
" We cannot execute an unpopular law." Indeed ! 
Indeed ! I can remember when Marshal Tukey put a 
chain round your Court-House to execute a law that was 
hated by the CommonAvealth of Massachusetts full as bit- 
terly as Beacon Street hates the j\Iaine Liquor Law ; and 
I can remember when he went up to a legislative com- 
mittee appointed to examine into his conduct, and inquire 
why a policeman of the city of Boston was acting in that 
illegal manner, against the statute of the State, and 
answered Mr. Keyes, " Sir, I know it is illegal, but I 
mean to do it. Help yeurself I " 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 515 

In 1843, Latimer was arrested by a policeman with a 
lie in his mouth. In 1851, Sims was surrendered by 
pohcemen acting illegally, and avowing their defiance. 
In 1851, Burns was sent back, and his claimants were 
aided by the police, contrary to the statute. Unpopular 
laws ! The city can execute anything it wishes to, un- 
popular or popular. The city executes every one of its 
own by-laws perfectly. No nian steals with impunity ; no 
man violates Sunday w4th impunity; no man sets up a 
nuisance with impunity. As the Grand Jury said, sev- 
eral years ago, of these grog-shops, " The municipal au- 
thorities can remove this nuisance, or at least abate it, 
whenever they will. It is as much in their power as the 
offal in the sewers or the dirt in the streets." 

Tell one hundred and eighty thousand Yankees that 
they cannot execute a law when they wish to ! Once, by 
happy accident, our Mayor left the city, and an exceptional 
but most unexceptionable Alderman, Mr. Otis Clapp, took 
his place, — no trouble that day in quelling the mob. 
Deputy Chief Ham did it in thirty minutes. It is only 
the presence of grog-shop Mayors that makes mobs om- 
nipotent. But suppose Mayors cannot execute the laws, 

what then? If Berkshire should say, "We want, 

every one of us, to have two wives," and practise that 
plan, sending word up to Boston, "We cannot execute 
the other law," do you think we should sit down quietly, 
and let it go ? How long ? 

Boston has five or six trains of railroads, — one to the 
Old Colony, one to Providence, one to Worcester, one to 
Lowell, one to Fitchburg, one to the eastern counties. All 
of them run locomotives where they wish to. Suppose 
that, on the Fitchburg Railroad, one locomotive, for a year, 
never got farther than Groton, — what do you think the 
Directors of that road would do ? Would they take up 
the rails beyond Groton, or would they turn out the en- 



516 »A METROPOLITAN POLICT;;. 



gineer ? There is a law of the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, thoroughly executed in every county but ours ; 
and here the men appointed to execute it not only do not 
want to, but you cannot expect them to. They were 
elected not to execute it, and they say they can't execute 
it. Shall we take up the rails, or change the engineer ? — 
which ? 

Men say, to take the appointment of the pohce out of 
the hands of the peninsula is anti-democratic. Why, from 
1620 down to within ten years, the State always acted on 
that plan. The State makes the law. Who executes it ? 
The State. For two hundred years, the Governor ap- 
pointed the sheriff of every county, and the sheriff ap- 
pointed his deputies, and they executed the laws. The 
constables of the towns were allowed merely a subsidiary 
authority to execute by-laws, and help execute the State 
law. The democratic principle is, that the law shall be 
executed by an executive authority concurrent with that 
which makes it. That is democracy. The State law, 
naturally, democratically, is to be executed by the State. 
We have merely, in deference to convenience, changed 
that of late in some particulars, and we may reasonably 
go back to the old plan if we find that, in any particular 
locality, the new plan fails. Why not? In all other 
matters of State concern, as Mr. Ellis has well shown, — 
Board of Education, Board of Agriculture, and all the 
various boards, — the State has the control. You per- 
ceive this " anti-democratic " argument can be carried out 
to an absurdity. Suppose the Five Points of New York 
should send word to the Fifth Avenue, " We don't like 
your police ; we mean to have one of our own, and it will 
be very anti-democratic for you to take the choice of our 
own constables out of our own hands." Suppose North 
Street should send word to the City Hall, " We have 
concluded to turn every other house into a grog-shop, or 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 617 

something almost as bad, and to appoint our own police ; 
please instruct your police to keep out of our ward." We 
should not say this was democratic. We should say, that 
as far as the interest of a community in a law extends, just 
so far that community has a right to a hand in the execu- 
tion of it. Now the State of Massachusetts feels an in- 
terest in the execution of the Maine Liquor Law. We 
have a sixth of the population and a third of the wealth of 
the State. Do the influences of these stop with the people 
who sleep on this peninsula ? Does not our influence 
radiate in every direction ? Do not twenty thousand men 
do business here, but not sleep here ? A third of the 
wealth ! Who owns it ? We that sleep here ? Not at 
all. These costly railroad depots, these rich banks, these 
large aggregates of property, who owns them ? Why, the 
men that live ten, twenty, thirty miles outside of the city 
limits, and come in here in crowds the first of January, 
April, July, and October, to get their dividends. Men 
who have millions invested on this peninsula no interest in 
knowing whether the streets are safe ! Sending their sons 
into our streets, — no interest in their being morally whole- 
some ! Trusthig their lives here, — no interest in their 
being safe ! 

A fortnight ago, a woman, a teacher in a country town 
within twenty miles of Boston, missed her father, — an 
honest, temperate farmer, though not a teetotaler. He 
came to the city to sell cattle, and had received five hun- 
dred dollars. He had been gone a week, and she came 
down to the city to hunt him up. She traced him from 
spot to spot, and finally found that the grog-shops had 
got hold of him, made him drunk, taken his money, 
kept him drunk three days, so that a convenient police- 
man might see him that number of times and complain 
of him as a common drunkard, and he had gone to the 
House of Correction for three months. Has that town 



618 A^Ha-EOPOLITAN POLICE. 

no interest in the streets of Boston ? Let me tell you 
again a story that I have told you once or twice before, 
for it holds a grave moral. A few years ago, one spring 
afternoon, when I left the city to deliver a lecture, I alight- 
ed from the railroad car at the foot of a hill, whose swell 
ing side bore the most magnificent of country dwellings. 
Architecture and horticulture had exhausted their art. It 
was so unlike anything about it, I was led to ask how it came 
there. The man who was driving me said it was built by 
a village boy, who wanted to show how much money he 
had made in Boston in fifteen years. " He left here with- 
out a cent," said the young man ; " went to Boston, be- 
came a distiller, returned with two hundred thousand dol- 
lars, — that is his residence." Do you suppose there was 
a Yankee boy within sight of that hillside who was not 
tempted to repeat this Boston experience, of rapid and 
easy wealth ? I rode on fourteen miles, and was set down 
opposite one of those village homes which Dr. Holmes 
describes, — a square house of the Revolutionary period, 
— old elms hung over the lawn before it. The same 
driver said, " In that front room lies dying the grandson 
of the man who built that house. Grandfather and father 
died drunkards, — lay about the streets of the village 
drunk. That boy and I started together in life. He 
went with me to Lowell. We went through the mills 
and a mechanic trade. Never did one drop of intoxicat- 
ing liquor pass his lips. Social frolic, increase of means, 
friendly entreaty, laughing taunts, gay hours, never tempt- 
ed him. Until thirty, he stood untouched, guarded by an 
iron resolution. Havino; oathered a few thousands, he was 
tempted to Boston for a wider trade. He went there, — 
stayed six years ; came home penniless and a drunkard, to 
lie in the very streets where his father and grandfather 
had lain before. He could stand up against every temp- 
tation, except Boston streets. There he lies dying, as his 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 5W. 

grandfather and fatlier before him." Do you say that the 
people of these country towns have no interest in the 
streets of Boston ? You tempt the virtue, melt the resolu- 
tion and corrupt the morals of the Commonwealth, as far 
as your influence extends. 

No interest ! Let me go a little way off, and be less 
invidious. New York has one fifth of the population of 
tlie State on Manhattan Island. Recently, in a great 
national convulsion, the city stirred herself to checkmate 
the State. For Wadsworth, the candidate of order, of 
liberty, of government, the country counties flung twenty 
thousand majority. Tlie demons of discord stirred up the 
purlieus of the city, and flung thirty thousand against him. 
Ten thousand, the ultimate majority, carried their candi- 
date to Albany. What was his first blow ? Seymour's 
first act, when he assumed the Governorship, what was 
it ? He fulfilled his bargain. He hurled his defiance at 
the Metropolitan Police, which kept him and his allies, 
conspirators, from carrying the Empire State into the 
hands of the Confederacy. These are the times wdien, as 
Macaulay says, " The vermin burrowing in garrets and 
cellars show themselves of terrible importance." Who 
knows that such times may not come upon us ? 

I have seen the day, in that city of New York, when 
Rynders dictated law to the Chief of Police, and Matsell 
obeyed, him. For twenty years I have seen in your city 
the mob rule when they pleased. I have seen your Mayor 
order his police, in Faneuil Hall, to take off" their badges 
and join the mob which clamored down free speech in that 
consecrated hall. You saw, two years ago, the State gov- 
ernment reeling before the victims of the Tremont House 
and Parker House. The Governor complained then, as I 
am told he does now, that in the whole county he had not 
one single ofiicer whom he could command to execute the 
law. Who shall say that it is not for the interest, for the 



.520 .ff^^H^ROPOLITAN POLICE. 

peace, for the prosperity, of the State to make this great 
centre of wealth and population independent of such base 
control ? We too may have a Fernando Wood, — who 
knows ? Our sixth part of the population of the State 
may attempt, in the interest of liquor and despotism, to 
defy the Commonwealth. It is too important a machinery 
to be left in the hands of the dangerous classes. We want 
to take it out of the hands of the dangerous classes, and 
put it into the hands of the Commonwealth, — nothing 
else. One of two things is necessary. The law is bad, — 
repeal it ; or the law is good, — keep it. No other county 
would be allowed to defy the law, — why this ? 

The Mayor "says he cannot execute it. Take him at 
his word. Undoubtedly, he cannot, for he was specially 
chosen not to do so ; but the question is. Can it be exe- 
cuted? What do the temperance majority of the Com- 
monwealth claim ? One trial, — nothing more. We have 
funded twenty-five years of discussion, any amount of toil 
and labor, in that statute. It never has had one trial yet 
on this peninsula. May we not ask simply one trial ? 
The locomotive has never attempted to go beyond Groton. 
Why take up the rails yet ? If Berkshire should say, 
" We can't execute your law against polygamy," what 
should we do ? Why, appoint fresh sheriffs, not repeal 
the law. So in this case, let not Massa<ihusetts kneel and 
say, '' I too am a slave to the grog-shops of the penin- 
sula." 

We do not claim that drunkenness can be wholly rooted 
out. But we do claim that this law can be executed as 
perfectly as other laws are, if its execution be intrusted to 
competent and faithful hands. No crime is wholly pre- 
vented. Our crowded prisons prove that. No law is 
perfectly executed. But there is nothing in the Maine 
Liquor Law that distinguishes it from other statutes. No 
man claims that the use of intoxicating di'ink can be wholly 



A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 521 

stoi)pcd. But it is idle and ridiculous to say that the puh- 
lie sale of it cannot be stopped, as much as the indiscrimi- 
nate keeping of gunpowder, or the opening of shops on 
Sunday, or the firing of muskets in crowded streets, 
whenever magistrates shall really wish and mean to do 
their duty. 

• A metropolitan police has been necessary in London, 
and now its streets are the safest in the world. In New 
York it has saved the city from convulsion and bloodshed. 
One of its prominent citizens said to me a short time ago, 
" You do not know how near we have been to an outbreak 
in this very street. But for our police, the attempt would 
have been made to surrender us to Southern dictation." 
That same civil disorder may impend over us. What is 
the remedy ? Let the State hold her hand on the vices 
of the peninsula, — claim her old democratic right to exe- 
cute the laws she has made, — to execute them if the city 
cannot, or if, by her constitution of government, she will 
not try to execute them faithfully. 

Our plan is to have Commissioners — three or five — 
appointed by the Governor or by the Legislature, which- 
ever seems best. Let them hold their offices for three or 
five years ; they appoint, rule, and remove the members 
of the police force. Such a Commission would be re- 
moved, as far as anything in our civil system is or ought 
to be, from the control of party politics, and would be 
largely independent of the " dangerous classes." This 
peninsula needs it immediately, — the neighboring towns 
and cities will need it soon. The members of such a po- 
lice force should hold their places during good behavior, 
and be removed only on charges stated in writing, to 
which they may have a chance of replying. Now, every 
fall, the liquor-dealer or other criminal, whom an honest 
policeman has troubled, holds up his warning finger to the 
Alderman of that ward, — '* Remove that policeman, or 



b22 A JIETEOPOLITAN POLICE. 

don't expect my vote." What officer can be expected 
to do liis duty in such circumstances ? Fellow-citizens, 
during the two or three months preceding our citv elec- 
tions, we have, practically, no police, — none that dares 
execute a law disagreeable to any influential class. 

The moment the liquor interest of the city see that 
their mixing in city elections will not secure a police force 
in their interest, they will probably leave the election of 
Mayor and Aldermen to the natural action of ordinary 
politics, as they did in New York, and then we shall have 
as good officers as our system will secure, with the present 
level of education. Such Mayors and Aldermen will, 
probably, no longer prostitute the jury-box to defend rum 
and shield mobs. They will have no mterest to do so. 
They cannot so w^holly corrupt the jury-box as to protect 
the liquor-seller. The liquor once poured into the street, 
according to the statute, by an honest policeman, he must 
be sued by its owner before a jury of the county. No 
Mayor could make up a jury wholly of liquor-dealers. 
Two or three honest men on it suffice to disagree, and no 
verdict, in that case, is in effect a verdict for the officer. 
Disagreement of juries now, wdiich a servile Mayor 
arranges for, protects the indicted grog-seller ; then, to use 
a common proverb, "the boot ^vould be on the other leg," 
and disagreement of juries executes the law. But if this 
change be not an entire relief, we must press forward, and 
find a remedy for that. I have full faith in democratic 
institutions. Work on, and we shall yet lift them up to 
much higher perfection. The future is sure. Honest 
men rule in the end. Only show them their interest and 
duty, and, in due time, they will rally to do it. Ten years 
ago, I made an antislavery speech, painting Southern des- 
potism, and demanding that the North should rouse her- 
self against her tyrants. The next day, meeting the 
oldest statesman of the Commonwealth, he said to me, 



A METROPOLITAI"? POLICE. 523 

" Your speech was all true. I knew it thirty years ago. 
But what can you do ab(nit it ? They won't listen." I 
answered, " I mean to protest, — claim my riglits, and de- 
nounce those who assail them, whether they listen or not." 
The policy has been somewhat successfid. Agitate ! and 
we shall yet see the laws of Massachusetts rule even 
Boston, 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I understand this is 
a ward meeting, — the Sixteenth Ward of New- 
York, the banner ward for radical Republicanism. [Ap- 
plause.] A very good-sized meeting for a ward meet- 
ing. [Laughter.] I am glad, for the first time in my life, 
to be adopted into the politics of New York city, and to 
address a ward meeting in behalf of justice and liberty. 
The text of my address is, Patience and Faith. Possess 
your souls in patience, not as having already attained, not 
as if we were already perfect, but because the whole na- 
tion, as one man, has for more than a year set its face 
Zionward. Ever since September 22d of last year, the 
nation has turned its face Zionward; and ever since Burn- 
side drew his sword in Virginia, we have moved toward 
that point. [Cheers.] Now, a nation moving, and mov- 
ing ill the right path, — what reason is there for doubt? 
what occasion for despair ? We have found out at last the 
method, and we are in earnest. Patience, all the passion 
of great souls, makes victory certam ; when the human 
heart is once capable of this greatest courage, no matter 
what clouds may be on the horizon, now and then God 
lifts the cloud so as to show us the blue sky behind ; no 

* Substance of Speeches in New York, January 21 and May 11, 1863, — 
the last as one of a series of Lectures before the Sixteenth Ward Republican 
Association. 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 525 

matter how dark political mistake or treachery may lower, 
the moment comes when the North says that it is all a 
phantasmagoria, and behind, the great heart of the nation 
beats true to its destiny. [Cheers.] When I stood on 
this platform five months ago, men said : " You must not 
be surprised if blood flows in the streets. Traitors are 
trying to take the great Capital of the North out of our 
arms, and the Democratic party of the State is behind 
them." But one fine morning there was prudent hesita- 
tion in the leading Democrat of Albany, and the Mayor 
of New York defeated him on his first move. [Cheers.] 
When the counties came to be represented, the leaders 
found an army with officers and no rank and file. And 
the Goliath of Connecticut Copperheads has been killed, 
not by a stripling, but by a girl. [Applause.] Or if we 
must add to her merits that of General Hamilton of Texas, 
the eloquent champion of the Union, then we can almost 
say that out of the mouths of girls and slaveholders God is 
perfecting liberty. [Applause.] Now I neither doubt nor 
despair. Gradually, one after another, the shams of the 
North fall away. It is to be a long fight, no local strug- 
gle, —only one'^part of the great fight going on the world 
over, and which began ages ago, — only one grand di- 
vision, one army corps doing its duty in the great battle 
between free institutions and caste institutions, the world 
over. Freedom and Democracy against the institutions 
that rest upon classes. We may be the centre or only the 
outskirts of that struggle, but wherever caste lives, wher- 
ever class power exists, whether it be on the banks of the 
Thames or the Seine, whether by the side of the Ganges 
or the Danube, there the South has an ally, just as the 
surgeon's knife gives pain when it touches the living fibre. 
[Cheers.] And against this mighty marshalling of every- 
thing that is strong in human selfishness the democracy 
of the North does battle. Some of our friends are anxious 



526 THE^^TE OF THE COUNTRY. 

that able and earnest men shall go to England, make the 
real state of the case known there, and so, they think, 
avert national collision. Instinct, Mr. Chairman, is a 
great matter. The ruling classes of England understand 
our quarrel only too well. They feel that victory for the 
North is ultimate ruin for them. The more of the truth 
you show them, the more their hearts lean to the South- 
ern side, — their side. 

Every proud man who hates his brother is our enemy, 
every idle man too lazy to think is our enemy, every 
loafer who seeks a livino- without w^orkin^ for it is our 
enemy. [Applause.] Every honest man, askmg only 
for his own, and willing fairly to do his part, is our ally,, 
whether he eats rice on the banks of the Gano-es or is 
enrolled in the army under Hooker : never till honest 
men realize this can there be peace or union. Till that 
time union means a submission to the old slavocracy, as 
bitter and more relentless than ever. The South counted 
on two alHes in the ranks of her Northern enemy : one 
was hatred of the negro, — the other Copperhead Demo- 
cratic sympathy with the aristocracy of the South. She 
counted confidently on these allies, but found she had 
reckoned without her host. We have been accustomed 
to say on this platform, for the last ten years, that if cir- 
cumstances should ever rouse to an antislavery purpose 
the rank and file of the Democracy, the victory for free- 
dom would be as sure as the existence of God. The 
Abolitionists have always claimed that they had an invin- 
cible ally in that democratic prejudice against wealth and 
rank, and the ineradicable love which man has at the core 
for the rights of his fellow-man. [Applause.] When 
the war broke out, the first blow the South aimed at the 
Union, as if according to chemical law, crystallized that 
level of democracy into an antislavery mould, and from 
that hour to this it is the sheet-anchor of the Union, and 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 527 

while it holds the future is certain. The only reason why 
this element did not grope its way at once to victory was 
because it was led by men who did not intend to conquer. 
Our statesmen were only ready for the shibboleth, " Free- 
dom, if necessary to save the Union " ; it was a contin- 
gent freedom, — not freedom for itself and in any event. 
No one of them welcomed the war as a God-given oppor- 
tunity to do justice, and secure for the nation lasting, 
immutable peace. Under that sort of leadership we went 
to battle. The generals and the Cabinet meant no more 
than to play a part in the great drama of justice for which 
their hearts were not ready. Lucian tells us of an exhi- 
bition in Rome in which monkeys had been ti'ained to 
take part in a play. They played their parts perfectly, 
for a while, before an audience composed of the beauty and 
fashion of the city, but in the midst of the performance 
some Roman wag fliuig upon tlie stage a handful of nuts, 
and immediately the actors were monkeys again. Our 
statesmen went to Washington monkeys in human attire, 
determined to compromise if possible ; the South flung 
nuts among them for eighteen months, and they were on 
all fours for the temptation. [Laughter and applause.] 
That epoch is ended. As in Cromwell's day they 
sloughed off such effete elements as Essex and Fairfax, 
we should slough off generals and statesmen ; and never 
can we be successful till routine West Point and rotten 
Whiggery have been made to put on decent attire, or 
sent back to private life, and those put in their places who 
believe in absolute, uncompromising war. 

This real democratic element in the North is strong 
enough, were it one and united, to have crushed all its 
foes on this continent in ninety days. There never w^as a 
time since the commencement of the struggle when, if the 
North had been a unit, the war might not have been ended 
in three months ; and, so ended, it would have left slavery 



528 THK^TATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



where it found it. But the North has never been a unit. 
With the North as a unit, democratic, intelHgent, resolved, 
in earnest, the South never would have risked the strug- 
gle. But she knew that the North was divided into three 
great parties. One was routine, West Point, too lazj to 
think. [Great applause.] I resolve hunkerism into in- 
dolence and cowardice, too lazy to think, and too timid to 
think. The man of the past is the man who got his ideas 
before he was twenty, and had rather think as his father 
thouo-ht than take the labor of thinkino; himself: he is a 
hunker, and he will probably die such. [Laughter.] 
And the North had a second element, negrophobia, the 
Saxon contempt for a black skin, disgust with the question 
of the negro, hatred of him as another race, contempt for 
him as a slave, and weariness of the question. Outside of 
that was the democrat of the North, in the good sense of 
the term, — the man who believes in the manhood of his 
brother the world over, and is willing he should have his 
rights. Ao;ainst such a North the South rebelled, — one 
of our hands tied up by negro hatred, and the other by 
constitutional scruples, and West Point on our shoulders. 
Airainst such a North the South rebelled. You remem- 
ber it well, — the- North that never dared to apply the 
line and the plummet to the ethics of its civilization, — 
that never dared to have a logic which would know no 
black, no white, when it studied its duties, — the North 
that, both in pulpit and in ciA^il life, believed and obeyed 
the old proverb : " When the monkey reigns, let every 
man dance before him." [Laughter.] As long as a 
wicked, contemptible institution had honors and wealth 
and fashion to bestow, so long the pregnant knee was 
crooked before it. That North the South met in battle, and 
she mistook, as we Abolitionists did, (that is, the issue will 
show whether we did mistake, we hope it is so,) how far 
the canker had gone, how great hold this routine of hun- 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 529 

kerism had on the body of the people : that North ralHed 
for the struggle, poured out her money like water, and 
her sons with ever-growing willingness for the great battle 
betwixt democracy and slavery, betwixt God and the 
Devil, for the world and the century. The government 
was equally in the dark, equally undecided, equally uncer- 
tam what course to pursue, and for a long time we stum- 
bled too-ether. We have learned of events, and claim to 

CD ' 

know our times. The government seems neither to learn 
nor to forget anything. Why ? Well, I think, because 
our rulers were educated as Whigs. The old Whig party, 
good as it was in many respects, virtuous in many of its 
impulses, correct in certain of its aspirations, had one great 
defect : it had no confidence in the people, no trust in the 
masses ; it did not believe in the conscience or the intelli 
gence of the million ; it looked, indeed, upon the whole 
world as in a probate court, in which the educated and 
the wealthy were the guardians. And so, when our rulers 
entered on the o;reat work of defendino; the nation in its 
utmost peril, they dared not fling themselves on the bosom 
of the million, and trust the country to the hearts of those 
that loved it. Your President sat in Washington, doubtful 
what he ouo-ht to do, how far he mioht go. Month after 
month, stumbling, faithless, uncertain, he ventured now a 
little step, and now another, surprised that at every step 
the nation were before him, ready to welcome any wOrd 
he chose to say, and to support any policy he chose to sub- 
mit ; so that matters of vexed dispute, matters of earnest 
doubt, the moment the bugle gave a certain sound, have 
passed into dead issues. You know that when the rebel- 
lion first broke forth no man dared speak out touching the 
negro. The South fought to sustain slavery, and the 
North fought not to have it hurt. But Butler pronounced 
that magic word "contraband," and summoned the negro 
into the arena. [Applause.] It was a poor word. Some 

34 



530 THE «^^ OF THE COUNTRY. 

doubt — I do not — whether it is sound law. Lord Chat- 
ham said, " JViiUus liber homo " is poor Latin, but it is 
wortli all the classics. Contraband is a bad word, and may 
be bad law, but just then it was worth all the Constitution 
[applause] ; for in a moment of critical emergency it sum- 
moned savincr elements into the arena, and it showed the 
government how flir the sound fibre of the nation extended. 
When Fremont [loud and long-continued applause] — 
"why won't you ever let me go on when I name Fremont ? 
[Laughter.] I say, when he pronounced that word Eman- 
cijjation on the banks of the Mississippi, the whole North, 
except the government, said Amen. [Applause.] The 
government doubted till the 22d of September, 1862. 
But the moment the government pronounced the word, it 
floated into a dead issue, and nobody worth minding now 
doubts or debates about the emancipation of slaves. [Ap- 
plause.] It only shows you how strong the government 
is, if it will only act ; how certain the heart of the people 
is to support it, if the government will only trust. If Mr. 
Lincoln could only be made to accept the line of the old 
huntsman song, — 

" Sit close in the saddle and give him his head," 
he could carry twenty millions of people with him over 
every barrier to victory and peace. [Loud applause.] I 
believe, therefore, in ultimate success, because every act 
of the government is more than indorsed by the intelli- 
gence and virtue 'of the people, — the virtue of tJie jjeople. 
That is the only point at issue. To-day, your city roars 
■^^•ith the tumult of welcome for returning soldiers. Those 
soldiers will find here not a Virginia eaten over with bar- 
renness, not starving peojile, not empty treasuries ; they 
will find a North untouched, — so much money that we 
have not to go abroad to borrow any [applause], so much 
wheat that we could feed the world, such ample munitions 
of war that vour traitor merchants smu<X2:l^ them to Caro' 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 531 

lina [sensation], — a traveller might journey througli half 
the North, and if he neither spoke nor read English, he 
would never dream there was a war in any ])art of the 
nation, — an untouched North, while the Soutli, muster- 
ing all her white men and all her sympathizers the world 
over, luis not yet reached the garnered treasure of North- 
ern strength. We have not yet put forth the first begin- 
ning of our power. In Scripture phrase, " Truly there 
has been a hiding of our power." If we fail, it will be 
because we deserve to, because we have not virtue enough 
to prefer the end to the means. There is no question but 
of the conscience and intelligence of the North. Now, I 
believe in that, because thus far the government has never 
asked for anything, nor ventured anything, that tlie readi- 
ness of the people has not both given and indorsed. There 
is my ground of hope. 

I do not believe in Southern exhaustion. There may 
be starving men at the South, starving households, ill-clad 
soldiers, but there is no such exhaustion as approaches de- 
spair. The South has not yet begun to play her last card. 
The moment she feels exhaustion she will proclaim liberty 
to the negro. The moment her cause touches its doA>Tifall 
im the judgment of its leaders, she will call the black into 
her ranks, — call him by some proclamation of gradual 
emancipation, which will gather to her side the heartiest 
sympathy of the English aristocracy. England /never was 
an antislavery nation. Her ruling classes never accepted 
emancipation on any basis. England herself never ac- 
cepted immediate abolition on any basis. As O'Connell 
well said, the scheme of immediate emancipation was car- 
ried over Parliament by the conscience of the middle 
classes, and they do not usually rule in England. To-day, 
that party in the contest which offers England gradual 
emancipation will offer her all that her judgment approves. 
Before the South permits her flag to stagger, she will 



532 THE^ftlr 



E OF THE COUNTRY. 



write on it gradual emancipation, and brino^ the House of 
Commons to her side. Many slaveholders will submit 
to be colonists of England where ofle would submit to Lin- 
coln. General Hamihon goes to Boston, a slaveholder, 
and says on our platform, " I am glad that my slaves are 
gone if it saves the Union." If loyal men will surrender 
their slaves and save the Union, do you not suppose dis- 
loyal men will surrender theirs to save the Confederacy ? 
Do you suppose the South will stop before she puts on to 
her banner Emancipation ? The moment she utters that 
word, I shall admit that she feels weak in the knees, — 
never till then. Tliere is no exhaustion yet that touches 
a traitor. The men that rebelled are the slaveholders, — 
rebelled under the pretence of slavery, with the real pur- 
pose of killing republican institutions and founding aristo- 
cratic institutions in their place. Slavery was the point to 
be protected, and the pretence that ralhed the rebellion. 
But, now that it is afoot, its leaders throw off the mask, 
and, without concealment, avow at home that their object 
is to put this belt of the continent under the control of 
aristocratic institutions, for the perpetuation of that sys- 
tem, among others, which they love. That element has 
yet felt no exhaustion, — it boasts, justly, of rare military 
skill, and of as large armies as ordinary men can handle, — 
and with that element I have no plea of ccmcihation. I 
am for conciliation, but not for conciliating the slaveholder. 
Death to the system, and death or exile to the master, is 
the only motto. [Applause.] There is a party for wliom 
I have ever the right hand of conciHation, and whenever 
the foot of military despotism is lifted from that party, I 
belie-ve that in the South itself we shall be surprised at the 
weight, strength, and number of the men who still love 
the Union. There is a party for whom I have conciliation, 
and this [taking by the hand a beautiful little girl of £ve 
years old, with a fair complexion and light auburn ring* 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 533 

lets] is its representative. In the veins that beat now in 
my right hand runs the best blood in Virginia's white 
races and the better blood of the black race of the Old 
Dominion [applause], — a united race, to whom, in its 
virtue, belongs in the future a country, which the toil and 
labor of its ancestors redeemed from nature and gave to 
civilization and the nineteenth century. [Applause.] For 
that class I have ever an open door of conciliation, — the la- 
bor, the toil, the muscle, the virtue, the strength, the democ- 
racy, of the Southern States. This blood represents them 
all, — the poor white, a non-slaveholder, deluded into re- 
bellion for a system which crushes him, — some equally 
deluded and some timid and gagged masters, — the slave 
restored to his rights, when now, at last, for the first time 
in her history, Virginia has a government, and is not a 
horde of pirates masquerading as a State. No, the South 
has not yet felt the first symptom of exhaustion. Get no 
delusive hope that our success is to come from any such 
source. 

This war will never be ended by an event. It will 
never come to a conclusion by a great battle. It is too 
deep in its sources ; it is too wide in its influence for 
that. The great struggle in England between democracy 
and nobility lasted from 1640 to 1660, taking a king's life 
in its progress, and yet failed for the time. The great 
struggle between the same parties in France began in 
1789, and it is not yet ended. Our own Revolution began 
in 1775, and never, till the outbreak of the French Revo- 
lution concentrated the attention of the monarchies of 
Europe, was this country left in peace. And it will take 
ten or twenty years to clear off the scar of such a strug- 
gle. Prepare yourself for a life-long enlistment. God 
has launched this Union on a voyage whose only port is 
Liberty , and whether the President relucts, or whether 



534 THB«i^^E OF THE COUNTRY. 

the cablii-bojs conspire, it matters not, — absolute justice 
lioicls the hehn, and we never shall come into harbor until 
every man under the flag is free. [Applause.] Why do 
I say this ? I will tell you. We are accustomed to use 
the words North and South familiarly. They once meant 
the land toward the pole and the land toward the sun. 
They have a deeper significance at present. By the North 
I mean the civilization of the nineteenth century, — I mean ^ 
that equal and recognized manhood up to which the race 
has struggled by the tolls and battles of nineteen centuries, 
— I mean free speech, free types, open Bibles, the wel- 
come rule of the majority, — I mean the Declaration of 
Independence ! [Applause.] And by the South, I mean 
likewise a principle, and not a locality, an element of civil 
life in fourteen rebellious States. I mean an element 
which, like the days of Queen Mary and the Inquisition, 
cannot tolerate free speech, and punishes it with the stake- 
I mean the aristocracy of the skin, which considers the 
Declaration of Independence a sham, and democracy a 
snare, — which believes that one third of the race is 
born booted and spurred, and the other two thirds ready 
saddled for that third to ride. I mean a civilization which 
prohibits the Bible by statute to every sixth man of its 
community, and puts a matron in a felon's cell for teach- 
ing a black sister to read. I mean the intellectual, social, 
aristocratic South, — the thing that manifests itself by 
barbafism and the bowie-knife, by bullying and lynch- 
law, by ignorance and idleness, by the claim of one man 
to own his brother, by statutes making it penal for the 
State of Massachusetts to bring an action in her courts, 
by statutes, standing on the books of Georgia to-day, 
offering five thousand dollars for the head of William 
Lloyd Garrison. That South is to be annihilated. [Loud 
applause.] The totality of my common sense — oi what- 
ever you may call it — is this, all summed up in one 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 535 

word : This country will never know peace nor union 
until the South (using the words in the sense I have de- 
scribed) is annihilated, and the North is spread over it. I 
do not care where men go for the power. They mny find 
it in the parchment, — I do. I think, with Patrick Henry, 
with John Qnincy Adams, with General Cass, we have 
ample constitutional powers ; but if we had not^ it would 
not trouble me in the least. [Laughter and applause.] 
I do not think a nation's life is bound up in a parchment. 
I think this is the momentous struii-o-le of a o;reat nation 
for existence and perpetuity. Two elements are at war 
to-day. In nineteen loyal and fourteen rebellious States 
those two elements of civilization which I have described 
are fighting. And it is no new thing that they are fight- 
ing. They could not exist side by side without fighting, 
and they never have. In 17ST, when the Constitution 
was formed, James Madison and Rufus King, followed by 
the ablest men in the Convention, announced that the dis- 
sension between the States was not between o;reat States 
and little, but between Free States and Slave. Even 
then the conflict had begun. In 1833, Mr. Adams said, 
on the floor of Congress : " Whether Slave and Free 
States can cohere into one Union is a matter of theoretical 
speculation. We are trying the experiment." In June, 
1858, Mr. Lincoln used the language : " Tin's country is 
half slave and half free. It must become either wholly 
slave or wholly free." In October of the same year, Mr. 
Seward, in his great " irrepressible conflict " speech at 
Rochester, said : " The most pregnant remark of Napo- 
leon is, that Europe is half Cossack and half republican. 
The systems are not only inconsistent, they are incom- 
patible ; they never did exist under one government. 
They never can." " Oui' fathers," he goes on to say, 
" recognized this truth. They saw the conflict developing 
when they made the Constitution. And while tendt 



ler 



536 THBu^^TE OF THE COUNTRY. 

ccnscienced and tender-hearted men lament this strife 
between slavery and antislavery, our fathers not only 
foresaw, but they initiated it." They knew that these 
two systems would fight. But they thought under the 
parchment of the Constitution they could fight it out by 
types ; they could discuss it to a peaceful solution ; ballots 
and parties, types and free speech, would make brother 
States and sister States, — settle the conflict between two 
irreconcilable civiHzations. Wliat is the history of our 
seventy years ? It is the history of two civilizations con- 
stantly struggling, and always at odds except ivJien one or 
the other rules. So long as the South ruled, up to 1819, 
we had uniform peace. The Missouri Compromise was 
the first solemn protest of rising Northern civilization 
against the Southern. It was an unsuccessful protest. 
The South put it under her feet, but she did not kill it. 
It continued alive through the stormy days of Texas, and 
showed its head above water in the Compromise in 1850. 
And again it was strangled and put under the heel of 
fourteen States. But it culminated again by the irrepres- 
sible power of God's own laws, and in 1861 wrote the 
name of Abraham Lincoln on the topmost wall of the Re- 
public. This was not victory. Not victory, but the her- 
rald of victory. It was seventeen hundred thousand 
ballots recording the strength of the rising North against 
the South. And the statesmanship of the South read 
correctly this record. She said, " I can for four or eight or 
twelve years buy this man, and bribe that, and bully the 
other. But that is a poor and beggarly existence. There 
is another way open to me. I agreed at the outset to 
abide the issue of free discussion, and I put my system on 
trial against Massachusetts free speech." 

Seventy years ago the North flung down the gauntlet 
of the printing-press, and said, " I will prove that my sys- 
tem — freedom — is the best." The South accepted the 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 537 

Constitution of the United States, securing a free" press, 
and took the risk. She said : " There is my slavery. I 
beheve it will abide discussion. I am willing to put it into 
the caldron." And Massachusetts put in her land and 
character and brains, and we made a " hodge-podge," as 
the English law says, a general mess, a bowl of punch 
[laughter], of all the institutions of the nation, and we 
said, " There is the free press, untrammelled, for one ele- 
ment, and whatever cannot bear that must be thrown 
away." [Applause.] For two generations, the experi- 
ment went on ; and when Lincoln went to Washington, 
South Carolina saw the handwriting on the wall, — the 
handwriting as of old, — that the free press had conquered, 
and that slavery was sinking, like a dead body, to the bot- 
tom ; and she said, practically: "I know I made the 
bargain, but I cannot abide it. I know I agreed to put 
myself into the general partnership, and now comes the 
demand for my submission to the great laws of human 
progress, — I cannot submit." So she loaded her guns, 
and turned them, shotted to the lips, against the Federal 
Government, saying, " There is a fortification behind the 
printing-press, — it is the Minie rifle." " All well," said 
the North; " now we will try that. [Applause.] I offered 
you the nineteenth century, — books; you chose to go 
back to the fifteenth, — armies ; try it ! " The South 
flung down the gauntlet; the North raised it, and has 
flung it back into the Gulf. [Applause.] Beaten in both 
ways, conquered on both issues, our civilization triumphant 
in brains, and still more emphatically triumphant in bullets 
[applause], the question now comes up. Which shall rule 
this one and indivisible country ? The South said, " I 
load my cannon in order that I may annihilate Massachu- 
setts." " I accept it," said the Bay State, and, her can- 
non being the largest and the strongest, she annihilates the 
South mstead. [Renewed applause.] That is the argu 



638 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



xnent. We should have gone to the wall had she beaten. 
One nation ! — she goes to the wall when we beat. That 
is common sense ; that is fair, sound policy. 

We have been planted as one imtion ; the normal idea 
of our existence is that it is to be one and indivisible. We 
are one nation. That beincr taken for granted at the out- 
set, in this battle of civilizations, which is to govern ? 
The best. I do not think we have any claim to govern 
this country on the ground that we have more cannon, 
more men, and more money than the South. That is a 
bald, brutal superiority. The claim of the North to govern 
must be founded on the ground that our civilization is bet- 
ter, purer, nobler, higher, tlian that of the South. 

The two ideas have always contended for mastery, till 
now by argument, by types ; — now, with bullets. Our 
war is only an appeal from the nineteenth century of free- 
dom and ballots to the system of the sixteenth century. 
The old conflict, — a new weapon, that is all. The South 
thought because once, twice, thrice, the spaniel North had 
gotten down on her knees, that this time, also, poisoned 
by cotton-dust, she would kiss her feet. [A voice, " No 
go this time ! " and applause.] But instead of that, for the 
first time in" our history, the North has flung the insult 
back, and said : " By the Almighty, the Mississippi is 
mine, and I will have it." [Applause.] Now, when 
shall come peace ? Out of this warlike conflict, when 
shall come peace ? Just as it came in the conflict of par- 
tics and discussion. Whenever one civilization gets the 
uppermost positively, then there will be peace, and never 
till then. There is no new thino; under the sun. The 
light shed upon our future is the light of Experience, 
Seventy years have not left us ignorant of what the aris- 
tocracy of the South means and plans, if it has left the 
Secretary of State ignorant. [Laughter and applause.] 
The South needs to rule, or she goes by the board. She 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 539 

IS a wise power. I respect her for it. She knows tliat 
she needs to rule. What does Mr. Jefferson Davis plan ? 
Do you suppose he plans for an imaginary line to divide 
South Carolina from New York and Massachusetts ? 
What good would that do ? An imaginary line will not 
shut out ideas. But she must bar out those ideas. That 
is the programme in the South. He imagines he can 
broaden his base by allying himself with a weaker race. 
He says : " I will join marriage with the weak races of 
Mexico and the Southwest, and then, perhaps, I can draw 
to my side the Northwest, with its interests as an agri- 
cultural population, naturally allied to me, and not to the 
Northeast, with its tariff set of States." And he thinks 
thus, a strong, quiet slaveholding empire, he will bar New 
Eno'land and New York out in the cold, and will have 
comparative peace. But if he bar New England out in 
the cold, what then? She is still there. [Laughter.] 
And give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea 
will upheave the continent. Now, Davis knows that better 
than we do, — a great deal better. His plan, therefore, 
is to mould an empire so strong, so broad, that it can con- 
trol New England arid New York. He is not only to 
found a slaveholding despotism, but he is to make it so 
strong that, by traitors among us, and hemming us in by 
power, he is to cripple, confine, break down, the free dis- 
cussion of these Northern States. Unless he does that he 
is not safe. He knows it. Now I do not say he will suc- 
ceed, but I tell you what I think is the plan of a states- 
manlike leader of this effort. . To make slavery safe, he 
must mould Massachusetts, not into being a slaveholding 
Commonwealth, but into being a silent, unprotesting Com- 
■monwealth ; that Maryland and Virginia, the Carolinas, 
and Arkansas, may be quiet, peaceable populations. He 
is a wise man. He knows what he wants, and he wants it 
with a will, like Julius Caesar of old. He has gathered 



540 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



every dollar and every missile south of Mason and Dixon's 
line to hurl a thunderbolt that shall serve his purpose. 
And if he does achieve a separate confederacy, and shall 
be able to bribe the West into neutrality, much less alli- 
ance, a dangerous time, and a terrible battle will these 
Eastern States have. For they will never make peace. 
The Yankee who comes out of Cromwell's bosom will 
fight his Naseby a hundred years, if it last so long, but he 
will conquer. [Applause.] In other words, Davis will 
try to rule. If he conquers, he is to bring, in his phrase, 
Carolina to Massachusetts. And if we conquer, what is 
our policy ? To carry Massachusetts to Carolina. In 
other words, carry Northern civilization all over the South. 
It is a contest between civilizations. Whichever conquers 
supersedes the other. 

I may seem tedious in this analysis. But it seems to 
me that the simple statement includes the whole duty and 
policy of the hour. It is a conflict which will never have 
an end until one or the other element subdues its rival. 
Therefore we should be, like the South, penetrated with 
an idea, and ready with fortitude and courage to sacrifice 
everything to that idea. No man can fight Stonewall 
Jackson, a sincere fanatic on the side of slavery, but John 
Brown, an equally honest fanatic on the other. [Ap- 
plause.] They are the only chemical equals, and will 
neutralize each other. You cannot neutralize nitric acid 
with cologne-water. You cannot hurl Wilham H. Sew- 
ard at Jeff Davis. [Great applause and laughter.] You 
must have a man of ideas on both sides. Otherwise the 
elements of the struggle are unequal. 

Our object is to subdue the South. What right has 
our civilization to oust out the other ? It has this right : . 
We are a Union, — not a partnership, — a marriage. 
We put our interests all together in 1787. We joined 
our honor and our wealth. This question is not to be 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 541 

looked at like a technical lawyer dotting his i's and cross- 
ing his t's, and making his semicolons into colons. It is to 
he looked at in the broad light of national statesmanship. 
Our fathers, if they were honorable men, as we believe, 
accepted slavery as a part of their civil constitution on the 
ground that it was put into a common lot with freedom, 
with progress, with wealth, with education. If it stood its 
own, well ; if it went by the board, so. It was an intelli 
gible, if not an honest, bargain. They consented to be 
disgraced by the toleration of slavery ; they consented to 
let the fresh blood of the young, vigorous free labor of 
many States build it up into longer and firmer life, only 
on condition that it should take its chances with all the 
other great national interests. It was with this funda- 
mental understanding that the nation commenced, and the 
great special interests of the country are based upon it. 
For instance, the Illinois farmer, when he bouo-ht of the 
Union a thousand acres in the Northwest, he did not 
buy a thousand acres isolated in the Northwest ; he 
bought a thousand acres with New Orleans for his port of 
entry and New York for his counting-house. And it was 
as much a part of the deed as if it had been so written. 
Now, if South Carolina can show that Illmois and New 
York have broken the deed, she has a right of revolution ; 
that is, she has a right to reject it. But until she can 
show that they have broken the deed, she is a swindler. 
Ilhnois owns New Orleans as much as Chicago, in a na- 
tional sense. So the negro who sat down and waited 
when Samuel Adams, who thought slavery a crime, and 
your Gouverneur Morris, who thought it a disgrace and 
a sin, said, " Wait, the time will come when the constant 
waves of civilization or the armed right hand of the war 
power will strike off your fetters," and the slave sat down 
and waited. In 1819, — the Missouri Compromise, — 
when the time had come, as John Randolph said the time 



542 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



would come, wlien tlie master wouldifv mi away from his 
slave, the slave arose and said, "FjjtM the pledge; I 
have invested a generation of submission." We begged 
him still to wait, and he sat down in the darkness of de- 
spair. God alone counted the moments of his agony. At 
last the gun sounded at Sumter, and the slave cried, 
" New York and Massachusetts, fulfil the pledge of your 
fathers in the name of God and justice." [Cheers.] We 
arc a nation by all these considerations. To-day, the 
question is, not merely whether the negro shall be free ; 
not, certainly, whether New York and Massachusetts shall 
dictate to sister States ; but it is, whether the free lips of 
New York and Massachusetts shall be protected by the 
laws of the nation wherever the stars and stripes float; 
whether this great, free, model state, the hope of the na- 
tions and their polar star, this experiment of self-govern- 
ment, this normal school of God for the education of the 
masses, shall survive, free, just, entire, able not only to 
free the slave, but to pay the further debt it owes him, — 
protection as he rises into liberty, and a share in the great 
State he aided to found, not one merely in its ruins. 

Mr. Jefferson Davis has two hundred thousand men in 
arms to-day. I do not believe he ever had over three 
hundred thousand. Great is brag, and they have bragged 
three hundred, thousand into six, and wooden guns into 
iron ones. He has got two hundred thousand in arms to- 
day. Before this body retreats into Mexico, — before, like 
his great fother in the Gospel, he goes " violently down a 
steep place into the sea" [loud laughter and applause], — he 
will fio-ht crreat battles somewhere. Let me o-rant you that 
we crush that army out, scatter it, demoralize it, conquer 
it, — where is it to go? What will become of its mate- 
rials ? What brought it together ? Hatred of us. Will 
being beaten make them love us ? Is that the way to 
make men love you ? Can you whip a man into Ic dug 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 5J:3 

you ? YoTi wlii'^ Am into a bitterer hate. Where will 
that army go ? ^to a state of society more cruel than 
wai, — whose characteristics are private assassination, burn- 
ing, stabbing, sliooting, poisoning. The consequence is, 
we have not only an army to conquer, which, being beaten, 
will not own it, but we have a state of mind to annihilate. 
You know Napoleoii said, the difficulty with the German 
armies was, they did n't know when they were beaten. 
We have a worse trouble than that. The South will not 
only not believe itself beaten, but the materials which 
make up its army will not retire back to peaceful pursuits. 
AVhere are they going to retire ? They don't know how 
to do anything. You might think they would go back to 
trade. They don't know how to trade ; they never bought 
nor sold anything. You might think they would go back 
to their professions. They never had any. You might 
think they would go back to the mechanic arts. They 
don't know how to open a jackknife. [Great merriment.] 
There is nowhere for them to go, unless we send them 
half a million of emancipated blacks, to teach them how to 
plant cotton. To the North, war is a terrible evil. It 
takes the laAV3^er, the merchant, the mechanic, from his 
industrious, improving, inspiring occupation, and lets him 
down into the demoralization of a camp ; but to the South, 
war is a gain. The young man, melted in sensuality, 
whose face was never lighted up by a purpose since liis 
mother looked into his cradle, — the mere wreck of what 
should have been a man, — with neither ideas nor inspira- 
tions nor aspirations, was lifted by the war to a higher 
level. Did you ever look into the beautiful faces of those 
Roman young men, whose ideas were bounded by coffee 
and the opera, — till Garibaldi's bugle waked them to life, 
— beautiful, because human still? Well, that was the 
South. Over those wrecks of manhood breathed the 
bugle-note of ^^'oman and politics, calling upon them to 



544 T^ESTATE OF THE ^ COUN'J RY. 

rally and fight for an idea, — Southern independence. It 
lifted them, for the moment, into something which looked 
like civilization ; it lifted them into something that was a 
real life ; and war to them is a gain. They go out of it, 
and they sink down a hundred degrees in the scale of 
civilization. They go back to bar-rooms, to corner-gro- 
ceries, to plantation sensuality, to chopping straw, and 
calling it politics. [Laughter.] 

Now, that South, angry, embittered, having arms in its 
hands, what is it going to do ? Shoot, burn, poison, vent 
its rage on every side. Guerilla barbarities are but the 
first drops of the shower, — the first pattering drops of the 
flood of barbarism wdiich w411 sweep over those Southern 
States, unless our armies hold them. When England con- 
quered the Highlands, she held them, — held them until 
she could educate them ; and it took a generation. That 
is just what we have to do with the South .; annihilate the 
old South, and put a new one there. You do not annihi- 
late a thing by abolishing it. You must supply the vacancy. 
In the Gospel, when the chambers were swept and gar- 
nished, the devils came back because there were no angels 
there. And if we should sweep Virginia clean, Jeff Davis 
would come back with seven other devils worse than him- 
self, if he could find them, and occupy it, unless you put 
free institutions there. Some men say, begin it by export- 
ing the blacks. If you do, you export the very fulcrum 
of the lever ; you export the very best material to begin 
with. Somethincr has been said about the Alleo^hanies 
moving toward the ocean as the symbol of colonization. 
Let me change it. The nation that should shovel down 
the Alleghanies, and then build them up again, would be 
a wise nation compared with the one that should export 
four million blacks, and then import four million of Chinese 
to take their places. To dig a hole, and then fill it up 
again, to build a wall for the purpose of beating out your 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 645 

brains against it, would be Shakespearian wisdom compared 
with such an undertaking. I want tlie blacks as the very 
basis of the effort to regenerate the South. They know 
every inlet, the pathway of every wood, the whole coun- 
try is a map at night to their instinct. Wlien Burnside 
unfurled the Stars and Stripes in sight v)f Roanoke, he 
saw a little canoe paddling off to him, which held a single 
black man ; and in that contraband hand, victory was 
brought to the United States of America, led by Burn- 
side. He came to the Rhode Island general, and said : 
" This is deep water, and that is shoal ; this is swamp, that 
is firm land, and that is wood ; there are four thousand 
men here, and one thousand there." The whole country 
was mapped out, as an engineer could not have done it in 
a month, in the memory of that man. And Burnside was 
loyal to humanity, and believed him. [Applause.] Dis- 
loyal to the Northern pulpit, disloyal to the prejudice of 
his race, he was loyal to the instincts of our common na- 
ture, knew that man would tell him the truth, and obeyed 
him. The soldiers forded where the negro bade them, 
the vessels anchored in the deep waters he pointed out, 
and that victory was planned, if there was any strategy 
about it, in the brain of that contraband [applause] ; and 
to-day he stands at the right hand of Burnside, clad in 
uniform, long before Hunter armed a negro, with the 
pledge of the General that, as long as he lives and has 
anything to eat, the man who gave him Roanoke shall 
have half a loaf. [Enthusiastic applause.] Do you sup- 
pose, that if I multiply that instance by four million, the 
American people can afford to give up such assistance ? 
Of course not. We are to take military possession of the 
teriitory, and we are to work out the great problem of 
unfolding a nation's life. We want the four million of 
blacks, — a people instinctively on our side, ready and 
skilled to work ; the only element the South has which 

35 



546 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



belongs to the nineteenth century. You never can mis- 
take them. It used to be said, in old antislavery times, 
that if a fugitive negro saw a Quaker coat, his heart beat 
easy, — he knew he was safe. 'I think the Stars and 
Stripes can float lazily down and kiss the standard, all 
over the South, when a black face is in sight. 

But I am not speaking for the negro ; I am not asking 
now for his rights ; I am asking for the use of him. I 
want him for the future. We have to make over the 
State of South Carolina, and we are not sure there is a 
white man in it who is on our side. Do you remember 
that significant telegram of McClellan from Yorktown, — 
and it was only the repetition of a dozen telegrams that 
preceded it, substantially this : — "To the Secretary of 
War : Sir, we have taken Yorktown ; only one single 
white man in it." He does not think it necessary to say 
there were some thousands of negroes. Of course there 
were. They stayed where liberty was coming, and ideas, 
and civilization, and men who worked with their hands 
and their brains, as they themselves did. They recog- 
nized in the Yankee a brother mechanic. [Laughter and 
applause.] They said : " Here are men who don't know 
how to do anything but eat, and they are going. The 
people who are coming are men who know how to manu- 
facture, to create, and we, the creators of the South, stay 
to welcome the creators of the North." [Applause.] But 
that one poor solitary white man, who always remains 
[laughter,] — just like 

" The last rose of summer. 
Left blooming alone," 

[great merriment,] — he is only suggestive of that other 
kindred and fi'iendly race which never flies. 

Colonize the blacks ! A man might as well colonize his 
hands ; or when the robber enters his house, he might as 
well colonize his revolver. What we want is svstematic, 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 547 

national action. Confiscate those lands. Colonize them. 
Sell them with the guaranty of the government to the 
loyal Massachusetts man or New Yorker. Say to him, 
" There is a deed as good as the Union. Carry there your 
ploughshares, seeds, schools, sewing-machines." Carry free 
labor to that soil, and you carry New York to Virginia, 
and slavery cannot go back. I want to supply the va- 
cancy which this war must leave in every Slave State it 
subdues. The Slave States, to my mind, are men and 
territory, and nothing else. The rebellion has crushed 
out all civil forms. New government is to go there. It 
seems to me the idlest national work, childish work, for 
the President, in bo-peep secrecy, to hide himself in the 
White House and launch a proclamation at us on a first 
day of January. The nation should hav^ known it sixty 
days before, and should have provided fit machinery for 
the reception of three million bondmen into the civil state. 
If we launch a ship, we build straight well-oiled ways 
upon which it may glide with facility into its native ele- 
ment. So when a nation is to be born, the usual aid of 
government should have been extended to prepare a path- 
way through which to step upon the platform of civil 
equality. It is nonsense without. We cannot expect in 
hours to cover the place of centuries. It is a great prob- 
lem before us. We must take up the South and organize 
it anew. It is not the men we have to fight, — it is the 
state of society that produces them. He would be a fool 
who, having a fever, scraped his tongue and took no 
medicine. Killing Davis is only scraping the tongue ; 
killing slavery is taking a wet-sheet pack, destroying the 
very disease. But when we have done it, there remains 
behind the still greater and more momentous problem, 
whether we have the strength, the balance, the virtue, 
the civilization, to absorb six millions of ignorant, embit- 
tered, bedeviled Southerners, and transmute them into 



548 TUl^^TE OF THE COUN'TRY. 

honest, decent, educated, well-behaved. Christian mechan- 
ics, worthy to be the brothers of New England Yankees. 
[Applause.] That is the real •problem. To that this 
generation should address itself. You know men take 
their floating capital, and fund it in a permanent invest- 
ment. Now the floating virtue of forty thousand pulpits, 
the floating wealth of these nineteen millions of people, 
the floating result, big or little, of Tract Societies, is to be 
funded, — like sensible heat, is to be transformed into in- 
visible, latent heat ; it is to pass away into the Southern 
capacity of being educated. The water is to sink to its 
level. Harvard College, whose men can think, — though 
so often on the wrong side, — is to go down half way, 
and meet South Carolina, saying her A, B, C. That is 
what you are to do. 

It will take time undoubtedly. The nation is able to do 
it. The vigor and good sense and strength of endurance 
of these Northern classes is equal to the achievement, if 
we can only have leaders ; but we have none. 

The government looks to the people for its initiative. 
Lord Lyons said (substantially) in his dispatch to Earl 
Russell : " The Republican government dare not initiate 
a policy ; it looks outward and asks what its opponents will 
consent to." That is now the condition of the govern- 
ment. Hence the necessity of outspoken, perpetual, 
constant education of public opinion. I do not believe in 
the cTovernment at Washinsiton. I believe in the nation, 
I believe in events, I believe in the inevitable tendency of 
these coming ten years toward liberty and Union. But it 
is to be done as England did it in 1640, by getting rid 
gradually, man by man, of those who don't believe in 
progress, but live and mean to live in the past. And as 
man by man of that class retires, and we bring to the front 
men who are earnest in the present, victory, strength, and 
peace are to be the result. Now, for the present, I believe 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 649 

in Hooker. [Loud applause.] Men say lie has faults, — 
faults which some of his predecessors did not have. 
[Laughter.] Perhaps he has, but in my opinion a dia- 
mond with a flaw is better than a pebble without. [Ap- 
plause.] I do not set one defeat against him. I think, 
as Lord Bacon says, that a soldier's honor should be of a 
strong web which slight matters will not stick to. I be- 
lieve Hooker's is of that kind. He means to fight ; he 
knows how to fight ; and those two are new elements at 
the head of the army. On the other side there are three 
elements. Lee means to fight, and knows how to fight, 
and he is deadly in earnest. We have had men who 
neither knew how to fight, nor meant to fight, — of no 
ability. Now we have ability to match the other side. 
We yet lack earnestness, ideas, a willingness to sacrifice 
everything, a readiness to accept the issue, courage and 
industry in thinking. We have now two Commanders-in- 
cliief. They both live in Washington. The sad news 
reaches us to-day that one means to take the field. 
[Laughter.] Lincoln and Halleck, — they sit in Wash- 
ington, commanders-in-chief, exercising that disastrous 
influence which even a Bonaparte would exercise on a 
battle, if he tried to fight it by telegraph a hundred miles 
distant. But now it is said one of them means to take the 
field. Heaven forbid ! [Applause.] The difference be- 
tween Halleck and Fremont is just this : one has not 
learned anything since he graduated at West Point, and 
does not wish to. As long as he rules. West Point, dead 
lumber, rules. An old adage says, " A fool is never a 
great fool till he has learned Latin." And so a man is 
never utterly incorrigible till he graduates at West Point. 
[Laughter.] General Halleck does not mean to undei^ 
take the labor of thinking. He is too indolent to go about 
to examine a new idea. It is enough for him that it was 
not in the text-books when he graduated. [Laughter.] 



550 TttJ^TATE OF THE COUNTRY. 

Battles were not fousiTit so when he was tauo-ht, and if he 
is beaten according to the book, he is wilHng to be beaten. 
[Laughter.] The German conamanders complained of 
Napoleon, when he first launched into the battle-field, 
that he violated all the rules. Now his Missouri rival 
occupied the nineteenth century, and thought out the 
issues for himself, — had the labor of meeting a new con- 
tingency. He went to the head of the army a living man, 
— not a dead book. I am beyond likes and dislikes. The 
day is too serious for antipathies or likings. All these 
men are nothing but dead lumber, to be thrown into the 
gulf, that the nation, over the path their bodies make, may 
march like an army with banners to liberty and peace. 
[Applause.] But never will this rebellion be put down 
while West Point rules at Washington. [Applause.] It 
does rule. That second Commander-in-chief cuts off 
everything which outgoes his own routine. There are 
two great classes in the army and in the state : one is, 
such a man as Halleck, who hates negroes, spurns novel- 
ties, distrusts ideas, rejects everything but red tape. The 
others are Hamilton, Butler, Phelps, and Fremont [loud 
applause], Sigel, who mean that this Union shall mean 
justice at any rate, and that if it does not mean justice it 
shall not exist ; who know no nation except one that 
secures liberty. [Applause.] These are the men who 
are to shape the policy and guide the thunderbolts of the 
government. [Applause.] The cook takes an onion and 
peels off layer after layer till she gets to the sweet, sound 
vegetable. So you will have to peel off Seward and Hal- 
leck, Blair and Chase [laughter], till you get to the sound 
national element of civil and military purpose, the earnest 
belief, the single-hearted, intense devotion to victory, the 
entire belief in justice, which can cope with Stonewall 
Jackson. [Applause.] Never till then shall we succeed. 
I have compared General Halleck and General Fremont. 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 651 

Yon may take another parallel. One is Seward, and 
another is Butler. Seward does not believe in war, but 
in diplomacy • or compromise. He has prophesied again 
and again that this war, like the divisions of former times, 
could be quieted in sixty or ninety days. He thought so ; 
if he had not, he never would have risked his fame as a 
statesman upon the prophecy. He said by the voice of a 
regular army officer in the cabin of that ship which went 
down to dismantle Norfollv, when foreign-bred soldiers 
begged the American officers to stop and give them three 
hundred men to save two thousand cannon from the. 
armies of the Confederates, and guaranteed to take that 
place and hold it three or six months, with two hundred 
men, — one of his class took a gentleman into the cabin 
and said, " You don't understand this thing ; this is not a 
war, it is a quarrel : we have had a dozen of them ; we 
shall get over it in sixty days." Seward believes it yet ;* 
he receives commissioners ; he sends Frenchmen to Kich- 
mond to note terms ; he sends letters abroad dealing with 
rebels as equals in fact. Butler is the first man who 
ever hung a rebel [loud applause] , — and it ought to be 
recorded on his gravestone. If I were a politician and a 
general, I would not live an hour until I was his twin. 
[Laughter.] Let it go down to history, that one third of 
the nation burst into insurrection, and there was but one 
man, and he a Democrat, who dared to hang a felon. 
'[Loud applause.] A government in arms against crimi- 
nals who have wasted its treasures and filled two hundred 
and fifty thousand martyred patriot graves, — rebels, not 
belligerents. Now in the two distinctions between Hal- 
leck, routine, and Fremont, Phelps, Butler, realities, is 
the change needed for the future in military affairs ; in 
the diffisrence between Seward, the politician, and Butler, 
the government, is the change needed in civil affairs. If 
Seward is a Republican, God grant us a Democratic sue- 



652 TfflBNi^TE OF THE COUNTRY. 

cesser. [Laughter.] I want somebody to occupy the 
Presidential chair who beheves in the government and in 
the people, — who will act withont casting his eyes over 
his shoulders to see how far the people will support him. 
We need some one who believes in God and the people, — 
in justice and the masses. The Democrat believes in the 
masses ; the Whig is neither one nor the other. We 
want leaders that initiate, — that actually lead. Friends, 
my belief is, that you and I are bound to create an exact- 
ing, imperative public opinion which shall compel the gov- 
ernment to the adoption of such measures and such men. 
I say such men, because, though I believe in events, which 
are stronger than cabinets, and are bearing us onward 
whether we will or not, I believe also in men as harmo- 
nizino; the issue of events. Let me make the Generals, and 
I don't care who makes the proclamations. Only let me 
put at the head of the advancing columns of the Union 
certain men that I could name, and the Cabinet at Wash- 
ington may shut themselves up and go to sleep with Rip 
Van Winkle till 1872. [Laughter.] For I know those 
one blast of whose bugle-horns were worth a million 
men, — only put them in the heart of the rebellion, where 
our armies ought to be. I do not like to fight en tlie rim 
of the wheel and let the enemy rest on the hub. [Laugh- 
ter.] I am no anaconda fancier. [Laughter.] I would 
be at the hub. I would put men, whose names you know 
too well, among the black masses of the Carolinas and 
Mississippi, and fight outward, grinding the rebellion to 
powder. To hurt the rebellion by bringing the negro into 
the war, does not mean merely troops ; it means localities. 
When we bring the negro into the war, we fight in his 
home, in the Gulf States, where he ought to fight. The 
heart of the rebellion is where the negro is. It is there 
where our army should stand ; if victorious, the bottom of 
the tub is out. And you know whose name the slave 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 553 

cherishes hke a lioiisehold word in every hovel, and at 
whose bidding he will rise to the Stars and Stripes. Will 
the slave fight ? Well, if any man asks you, tell him no. 
Will he work ? If any man asks you, tell him no. But 
if he asks you whether the negro will fight, tell him yes. 
[Applause.] If he asks you whether the negro will work, 
tell him yes, — work even for patriotism without wages, 
as he has worked at Fortress Monroe, the United States 
promising him $ 10 a month, keeping the first $ 3 for any 
stray contrabands who might join him, taking the second 
$ 4 for clothing the contraband himself, and the other $ 3 
Uncle Sam keeps. [Laughter.] 

But men say, " This is a mean thing ; nineteen millions 
of people pitched against eight millions of Southerners, 
white men, and can't whip them, and now begin to call on 
the negroes." Is that the rio;ht statement ? Look at it. 
What is the South's streno-th ? She has eiMit millions of 
whites. She has the sympathy of foreign powers. She 
has the labor of four millions of slaves. What strength 
has the North ? Divided about equally — that is a very 
poor statement for your side — into Republicans and Dem- 
ocrats ; the Republicans willing to go but half way, and 
the Democrats not willing to go at all. [Laughter.] I 
will tell you what it is. It is like two men fighting. We 
will call them Jonathan and Charles. Jonathan is the 
North. His right hand, the Democratic party, he holds 
behind him. His left hand, his own tenderness of con- 
science uses to keep the slaves down. That is how he is 
to fight. No, that is not all. Upon his shoulders is 
strapped the West Point Academy, like a stone of a hun- 
dred weight. [Laughter.] The South stands with both 
hands, holding loaded revolvers, and, lest she should lose 
any time, John Bull is behind with additional pistols to 
hand the moment she needs them. Those are the two 
powers which are fighting this battle. Now the question 



654 TTm i^TF OF THE COUNTRY. 

is, wliether in this great conflict, — not a boy's play be- 
tween A and B, but the great struggle for the control of 
this continent in behalf of free labor, — is it not the duty 
of wise men to use every means within their reach ? This 
is a contest between slaveholders and free labor, — nothing 
more ; and in that contest the people, as in every contest 
against an aristocracy, are bound in their own right, in the 
right of their children, in the right of the great interests 
of the world which hang upon their success, to bestir 
themselves to understand, and to use the moment they see 
it, every weapon within their reach. I contend, therefore, 
that it is both constitutional and rightful, and, more than 
that, that it is absolutely necessary, that this government 
should, in the hour of its peril, call upon the four millions 
of blacks to aid it in a struggle which means liberty to 
them. I am not speaking now as an Abolitionist. I hold 
the hour to be a momentously serious one. Deeply in 
debt, with a terrible loss of blood, having fixed foul shame 
upon the cause of democracy by our indecision or delay, 
with a future before us complexed by every variety of 
dangers, the question is how we shall pilot the ship of 
state, the hope of the world, through this storm. The 
silver lining of the dark cloud that overhangs us is the 
irradicable loyalty of four millions of bondmen who hold 
the scale in theii' hands. 

Throw aside all these idle quibbles : a mighty work is 
before us ; welcome every helper. Cease to lean on the 
government at Washington. It is a broken reed, if not 
worse. We are lost unless the people are able to ride out 
this storm without captain or pilot. Yes, in spite of some- 
thing worse at the helm. The President is an honest 
man ; that is, he is Kentucky honest, and that is neces- 
sarily a very different thing from Massachusetts or New 
York honesty. A man cannot get above the atmosphere 
in which he is born. Did you ever see the Life of Luther 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 555 

in four volumes of seven hundred pages each ? The first 
volume contains an account of the mineralogy of his native 
country, the trees that grow there, the flowers, the aver- 
age length of human life, the color of tlie hair, how much 
rain falls, the range of the thermometer, &c., and in the 
second volume Luther is born. That was laying the 
foundation of Luther's character. Lincoln was born in 
Kentucky, and laid the foundation of his honesty in Ken- 
tucky. He is honest, with that allowance. He means to 
do his duty, and within the limit of the capacity God has 
given him he has struggled on, and has led the people 
struggling on, up to this weapon, partial emancipation, 
which they now hold glittering in their right hand. But 
we must remember the very prejudices and moral callous- 
ness which made him in 1860 an available candidate, when 
angry and half-educated parties were struggling for vic- 
tory, necessarily makes him a poor leader, — rather no 
leader at all, — in a crisis liJ\e this. I have no confidence 
in the counsels about him. I have no confidence in the 
views of your son of York who stands at his right hand 
to guide the vessel of state in this tremendous storm. 
[Hisses.] That is right. I honor every man who ex- 
presses his opi-nion. I express mine ; I would have every 
man express his dissent. I am saying nothing of the mo- 
tives of Mr. Sewai'd, nothing. When a man is dying, an 
honest mistake in the medicine is as bad as poison. The 
question is whether his is the statesmanship of the hour, 
and if it is not, then, on every theory of parliamentary 
government, he is bound to retire from his position and 
let another man occupy it. He has never uttered a 
prophecy which events have not falsified, nor initiated 
a policy which he has not himself been obliged to forego. 
If the hope of the nation rested on the Cabinet he 
leads, I should despair ; but our government is not at 
Washington, neither the brains nor the vigor of Wash- 



656 TlH^'M^TE OF THE COUNTRY. 

ington guide the people. It only blocks the path of the 
real government, — the people, — the people whose sub- 
stratum purpose, underlying all honest parties and cliques, 
is to save the Union by doing justice and securing liberty 
to all. At least, if all do not consciously plan this, the 
vast majority are willing for it. I know there are those 
standing to-day among us who would stretch their hands 
over two hundred thousand martyr gi'aves and clasp hands 
with the rebels. That element is to be put under our 
feet, with the declaration that the helm is*ours, by party 
right, by natural right, by the right of absolute justice ; 
and while God gives us the power, we will use it boldly in 
the service of freedom and the Union. [Applause.] The 
whole social system of the Slave States is to be taken to 
pieces ; every bit of it. General Butler tells us that in 
Louisiana it has gone to pieces. [Great applause, fol- 
lowed by an attempt at cheering for Butler, not fully 
understood.] He deserves a better cheer than that [three 
cheers for General Butler called for, and enthusiastically 
responded to] for this reason : he is almost the only gen- 
eral in our service who acts upon the principle that we 
are all right and the traitors all wrong. [Renewed ap- 
plause.] Most of our other generals act upon the princi- 
ple that the rebels are half right, and we are half wrong. 
When Butler was at New Orleans last summer, he assem- 
bled some fifty slaveholders in the parlors of the St. 
Charles Hotel, and said to them: "Don't you indulge the 
idea that there is a Democratic party in the North making 
a bridge back to Washington. I am a Democrat, and 
shall always be a Democrat ; and I tell you I will burn 
every house in the State of Louisiana, and put every 
negro's right hand upon every master's throat, before I 
take down that banner and go home." [Loud and long 
cheering.] Why is General Butler idle ? Who can 
tell ? Abraham Lincoln can't ; he says he knows nothing 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 557 

about it. [Laughter.] Geueral Ilalleck can't ; he says 
he knows nothing about it, WilHam H.- Seward can't; 
he says he knows nothing about it. One of tlie best generals 
in the service, the man who held the third city in the 
empire in his right hand like a lamb, that man comes 
liome to the Capital, and cannot find a man in the Cabinet 
wlio will take the responsibility of saying, '' I advised his 
recall," or will tell him the reason why he was recalled. 
[Three more cheers for Butler.] Why is he, one of the 
ablest of the very few able men this war has thrown to 
the surface, — why is he idle? 

General Hamilton had the promise of the government at 
Washington, over and over again, that he might go and 
shut the back door of the rebellion, Texas, out of which 
the traitors mean to fly when they are beaten, and through 
which Vicksburg gets her strength to-day. Why has he 
not gone ? Your own great fellow-citizen goes to Washing- 
ton under the pledge of the President, too much in a hurry 
to allow him to leave Washington for six hours, stays for a 
week, and comes back without a command. Why ? Be- 
cause Abraham Lincoln is not President of the United 
States, or because he too ardently longs and plans to be so 
again. Either because the war is henceforth subordinate 
to a policy dictated by the next Presidential canvass, or 
because behind President Lincoln, curbing his purpose, 
making conditions which balk his designs, making him 
doubt the purpose and the strength of the North, standing 
round him in civil and military positions, are men who do 
not mean that this battle shall be bravely and gallantly 
fouMit throuo;h. The worst rebellion in the land is the 
rebellion of the Cabinet and Generals against common 
sense and justice. Cromwell never succeeded until the 
Long Parliament sloughed off every man who believed in 
the House of Lords, and left nothing but democrats be- 
hind. We shall never succeed until we slough off every- 



558 tS^I^te of the country. 

thing that beheves in the past, and bring to the fi'ont 
everything that beheves there is but one remedy, — that 
is, to save the Union on the basis of Hberty. [Cheers.] 
I beheve that the President may do anything to save the 
Union. He may take a man's houses, his lands, his bank- 
stock, his horses, his slaves, — anything to save the Union ; 
the government may make every slave a free man, no 
matter where he is, Kentucky or Louisiana, now or to- 
morrow, with compensation or without. We need one 
step further, — an act of Congress abolishing slavery 
wherever our flag waves. The same war power and mil- 
itary necessity which made the proclamation constitutional 
authorizes this act as much. There is but one thing the 
government can't do to save the nation, and that is to 
make a free man into a slave ; everything else is within 
its power. 

I doubted somewhat when I heard the news from the 
Kappabannock, until I saw that reverses had taught 
the nation where its strength lay. God grant us so 
many reverses that the government may learn its duty. 
God grant us that the war may never end till it leaves 
us (»n the solid granite of impartial liberty and justice. 
[Cheers.] The government which has had two years 
of experience, of warning, and of advice, without profit- 
ing by it, must abide the consequences. In the words 
of the old proverb, "He that won't be ruled by the rud- 
der must be ruled by the rock." [Applause.] If they 
will not be ruled by wise counsels, they must abide dis- 
aster ; if they won't hear advice, they must expect re- 
verses. What we have to teach Washington is, that such 
is the full purpose of the millions, and under it and in it is 
the certainty of success, — the millions, not the leaders. 
In my judgment, unless the sky soon clears, the Republi- 
can party has proved its own incapacity, — written Icha- 
bod on its own brow. Judging by the past, whose will 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



559 



and wit can we trust? None of tliem, — I am utterly 
impartial, — neither President nor Cabinet nor Senate. 
Peel off Seward, peel ofF Halleck, peel off Blair, peel off 
Sumner, — yes, Massachusetts Senators as well as others. 
No, I will not say peel off our Massachusetts Senators ; 
but I will say their recent action has very materially less- 
ened my confidence in their intelligence and fidelity. I 
will tell you why. When the government called on New 
England for a negro regiment, and we went from county 
to county urging the blacks to enlist, one Massachusetts 
Colonel dared to say, down in South Carolina, in the face 
of the enemy, that he had rather be whipped without 
negroes than conquer at their side, — a Massachusetts 
Colonel, in that hour of emergency and critical issue. 
His case within twenty days went before the Senate of 
the United States, and the very week that his apology 
was filed in the War Office at Washington, Massachusetts 
Senators begged their reluctant brothers to make him a 
Brigadier-General. Yes, Massachusetts Senators, thor- 
oughly informed and put upon their guard, against ^le 
repeated remonstrance of their fellow-Senators, insisted 
on rewarding the mutineer. ["Shame, shame."] A 
private, ignorant, uneducated, just mustered into the ser- 
vice, mutinied in the streets of Boston, and Colonel Lowell 
shot him rightfully. [Cheers.] A Massachusetts Colonel 
mutinied in the face of the enemy, and a Massachusetts 
Senator made him a Brigadier-General. Such Republi- 
canism will never put down the rebellion.* [Cheers.] 

* Colonel Stevenson said he had rather be whipped with white men 
than conquer with black men ; and General Hunter took away his sword. 
When Adjutant-General Thomas went to the Southwest to muster negroes 
into our ranks, he lifted his index finger, and, pointing to Washington, 
said, " The wind blows North there," and from Brigadier to Lieutenant 
every man closed his lips and denied all prejudice against color. Negro- 
phobia stabs nearer the heart of the government, has more power to wound, 
than Davis has. There will be none of it in our army at least, the moment 



660 TlTF^H^TE OF THE COUNTRY. 

S2)ite of these sad, sad short-comings, I have hope. 
Iron, they say, cannot be made to sink in the current 
of Niagara. The Cataract tosses»it hke a chip, and bears 
it onward. The Cabinet is unredeemed inefficiency, — 
heavy as molten and doubly-hammered iron ; but in the 
Niagara of 1863 it is tossed onward like a chip. No 
thanks to it, but to the Niagara which will not be re- 
sisted. Neither the calculating or stupid stand-still-ism 
of the Cabinet, nor the weakness nor the blunders of 
our own best leaders, can long delay us. In time they 
will punish the Colonel who treads on a negro as se- 
verely as if he had wronged a college graduate, whose 
home was on Beacon Street or the Fifth Avenue. The 
South is not strong in herself. All her strength con- 
government lets its will be unmistakably knowm. That is the chief reason 
why I blame our Massachusetts Senators for conferring on Colonel Steven- 
son the honor of Brigadier-Generalship just at the moment he defied and 
denounced the policy of the government. Gross insubordination existed 
in General Hunter's department, — arising out of this among other causes, 
— the soldiei's, taking courage from the temper and talk of their officers, 
had inflicted terrible outrages on the negroes there ; at the North we were 
appealing to the negro to enlist. All over the land men tiied to penetrate 
the real purpose of government in respect to the negro ; — its friends, in or- 
der to help it ; the negro, that he might more cheerfully do his duty. "We 
were calling, in our peril, on a wronged race, which had been cheated of its 
rights again and again in every national emergency, and begging them now 
to trust and to help us, obliged to tell them they would have no commis- 
sions, but must serve under white officers. " Will they be men whose hearts 
are with us 1 " we were constantly asked by the negro. We trembled while 
we answei-ed, " We hope so, we believe so." At this crisis. Colonel Ste- 
venson, standing at Hunter's side, spits on the government's movements. 
It was a moment and an act which fixed the attention of the nation. It was 
an act which, so far as one man could, perilled a great and necessary move- 
ment. It deserved, therefore, severe rebuke. It was an act which gave the 
administration the very best opportunity to show the world its purpose be- 
yond a doubt. One right, decisive word from the Senate, and no officer in 
the service would afterwards mistake the purpose of the administration, or 
dare to misuse a negro. That word was, " Colonel Stevenson, for your 



THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 561 

sists in our unwillingness to strike ? Why this unwill- 
ingness to strike? Because we do not yet see John 
Hancock under a black skin ; and until we do see him, 
we shall never wage an honest and utter battle. No 
man who does not grant to the negro his just place is fit 
to be enlisted in the army of the Union, or to stand in its 
Senate, if that Union means liberty ; or if that is an exag- 
gerated statement, certainly no man has a right to lead 
our Senate or our army who does not carry that idea in 
his heart. [Applause.] 

Never until we welcome the negro, the foreigner, all 
races as equals, and, melted together in a common nation- 
ality, hurl them all at despotism, will the North deserve 
triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God. [Applause.] 

services and your apology we overlook your fault ; but stay a Colonel till 
by faithful and hearty co-operation in the new movement you earn the na- 
tion's confidence, and let every officer take warning by your fate." Such 
was the message we urged the Senate to send to the mutineer. Instead of 
that, Massachusetts Senators reward the mutineer to conciliate hunker trea- 
son. 

Thus we see high-handed defiance of the government's policy enter the 
Senate a Colonel and come out a Brigadier. What rule for its conduct 
could the army take from such an example ? Spit on the government, 
and expect promotion, — trample on the negro, and be sure of employ- 
ment ! Sigel, Fremont, Butler, Hamilton, Phelps, and a host of others idle, 
yet a negro-hater promoted on the plea of necessity to get good officers ! 
When Mr. Sumner let personal feelings lead him to such a step, he betrayed 
the negro. If, as his friends allege, he allowed Hunter or Burnside — one 
a new convert, the other not converted at all — to dictate such a course, he 
forgot that we chose him, not them, our Senator, and trusted him, not them, 
with these grave powers. But I have the best authority for saying that 
General Hunter never asked of any Senator to promote Colonel Stevenson. 
I have the best reason for believing that he, like myself, looks on that act of 
the Senate as a grave error. This is only one case of a single and soon-for- 
gotten individual, but it tests statesmen as much as large matters. Massa- 
chusetts Senators must reform on these points altogether if they expect trust 
in future. Let them see to it, lest, while they think they are using otheri 
for good ends, they may themselves be made tools for base ones. 
86 



662 THB^TATE OF THE COUNTRY. 

But the North will triumph. I hear it. Do you remem- 
ber in that disastrous siege in India, when the Scotch gui 
raised her head from the pallet of the hospital, and said to 
the sickening hearts of the English, " I hear the bagpipes, 
the Campbells are coming," and they said, " Jessie, it is 
delirium." " No, I know it ; I heard it far off." And in 
an hour the pibroch burst upon their glad ears, and the 
banner of England floated in triumph over their heads. 
So I hear in the dim distance the first notes of the jubilee 
rising from the hearts of the millions. Soon, very soon, 
you shall hear it at the gates of the citadel, and the Stars 
and Stripes shall guarantee liberty forever from the Lakes 
to the Gulf. [Continued applause.] 



THE END. 



